I call this piece a blossoming of life. I wanted to get extra credit for one of my classes but didn’t know what to write about. I figured out what to do by staring aimlessly at my plant. At first, I was writing about a tree but then my mind wandered off to a memory of my fourth-grade year where we grew sunflowers. I’d see those flowers till the end of August when there was only one left. Thus my inspiration.
It’s dark, cold, and wet. There’s no warmth, not a ray of sunshine. Surrounded by a hard shell that keeps me in my place. I try to break it but can’t. I’m stuck in a place that I don’t know. I’m alone with no one around. Is there supposed to be something here with me? Is this my life, to be kept here where nothing can reach me? A permanent sleep that I am stuck in, wanting to awake from my place of rest to feel, see, experience, and know what there is.
What’s this split in my prison? A way out. I extend my root into the unknown, not knowing what to find in this place. It’s still dark and wet, but no cold. It doesn’t feel all that bad to be here. I’ll try to come out a bit more. I feel like I need to go up to reach something, but I don’t know where that is. I try to move in the first direction that feels right, moving the dark pieces of wet particles out of my way. Feeling like I’m stretching out for the first time, as if this is what I was supposed to do. The weight on top of me lightens as I keep moving. Emerging from the dark, I feel so much all at once.
There’s so much to see. The sun shining on me feels like I’m being replenished from a long hunger. Seeing blue in the sky surrounding the sun with the wind pulling me up from the ground. Long thick sticks coming from the ground, some have smaller sticks coming off them in different directions, others just go up to the sun directly. At the ends of all these big and small sticks are all kinds of dark and green shapes with different patterns. Around me is a flat bed of dark brown with light green things sprouting up. They look the way I feel myself to look. Green surrounds us in little blades popping up from the ground. What a wonder to see.
My time here has been good. I’ve experienced so much all ready. Like these little “children”, as I hear them being called by the bigger child, with white sheets where they use small sticks to color on in weird patterns; they say that I’m the biggest of the batch and call me a sunflower. I do quite like that name. It’s fitting because of how much I enjoy the sun on me. I feel good, like I’m regaining energy from the sun and from absorbing water out of the ground from where I’ve arisen. Experiencing taking in wind and letting it out. Though I can’t move, like some of the red “bird,” as the children say, that soar down and land on me taking my seeds away. I don’t need to, nor want to. They look funny, always moving their red leaves around and moving in all sorts of directions. How I wonder if my seeds are scared, or wonder where they are?
I know what comes now. I’ve known for a while. The sun hasn’t come out as much. The children all wear more layers and never come near me. The red birds have become rounder. The other sunflowers around me have since stood up straight to look at the sun with me. Standing alone in a bed of dirt; nothing here that chirps joy or smiles with no worries. I can now only look back on what I’ve experienced. To see what awaits me as the rest of the stocks of flowers fall to the ground. This will be the last thing for me to feel. Knowing this, I can’t be bitter about anything. I’ve felt many different weather conditions, but this one will be my last. Feeling the thunder strike the ground, knowing that there will be a down pour of rain. As the first of the drops hit my welting leaves, the sun disappears behind a cloud. So that’s how it’ll be then. The sun has left me to my decay. Preparing for my permanent sleep as water falls on me, knowing I’m stuck here, I wouldn’t want it any other way. My last thoughts are that it’s dark, cold, and wet. There’s no warmth, not a ray of sunshine.
