Decoding Botany

I've never really been the type of person who liked flowers. Honestly, I was never the type of person who liked anything that could possibly insinuate romance. The color pink, cartoon hearts, rom-coms, love letters, etc etc. All of that ooey gooey goofy shit. And, I know, it's cliche for the child of a traumatic divorce to be a cynic, but cliches are cliches for a reason. When you watch two people lie to each other about loving one another for thirteen years, you tend to have an aversion to human connection. This is, however, besides the point.

A few days ago, a bouquet of cute yellow flowers showed up on my desk at work. Working at a millennial-centric marketing firm, our bosses tried to keep the morale high by sporadically dumping gifts on us when we were doing a good job, so I didn't think much of it, not even caring enough to check the attached card. It wasn't until that night, when I returned home to just a single flower taped to my front door, that it started to bother me.

Yesterday day at work, I asked my desk neighbor, Rex, if they had ever received gifts from work at home.

"Nah, never even got flowers from 'em." Rex nodded at the already-wilting flowers on my desk, "Most I get are these stinkin' gift cards. Those are some nice black-eyed susans, though. Color me jealous."

This set me on the path of decoding the flowers. In retrospect, if I had just bothered to read the card during that conversation with Rex, I'd probably be in a lot less trouble right now. For some reason, I still thought these flowers were coming from someone at work. Possibly a boss trying to harass me, or maybe a coworker whose sandwich I accidentally ate. Apparently there aren't enough brain cells in my noggin to put together that danger is much more likely to be rearing its ugly head from my past.

I stopped thinking about my mystery plants after about twenty solid minutes of googling flowers and their meanings. I figured out that black-eyed susans can be given with the meaning of justice, and that was about it. Work tends to be a little distracting, and-to be fair-I really didn't think it was that big of a deal at the time. The fact that someone had gone to my home and left a similar gift to one I had received at work seemed to have completely slipped my mind. The day flew by without anymore biological symbolism research. Before leaving work, I hit the restroom. Going into the stall, the room was empty and the counters sparkled from their recent clean. Leaving the stall, a single daffodil sat on the sink in front of me.

Before heading to my car, I let my boss know that I couldn't make it to work tomorrow.

Last night, I figured out all of the current flower species and their possible meanings. Turns out, the susans could have been given to either represent the coming of justice or simple childlike joy. Receiving ominous 'justice flowers' didn't seem great to me, so I hoped for the latter. The flower left on my door, an anemone. Given in a positive manner, it means anticipation; in a negative one, it means fading hope. And, while a bunch of daffodils signifies new beginnings and joy, the reception of one marks coming misfortune.

My sleep (if you could call it that) was plagued with restless thoughts of the who, what, and why this was happening to me. Justice, fading hope, and misfortune. Do these flowers really send messages of turmoil, or was I just reading into a secret admirer with poor floral communication? Without getting any real rest, I got out of bed at about five in the morning, slumped over to my coffee pot, and let my eyes adjust to the grey-blue skies outside the window.

My neighborhood was quiet, just a few lights on in the houses around mine and one older man loading his work stuff into the car. I threw some pity at him for being bound to such an early start. As I took the scene in, trying to find some inner peace from the comfort of my home environment, a dark figure caught my eye from the bushes in the house directly next to mine.

My heart stopped. I couldn't see the face, but I could feel our eyes locked on to each other. They did not bother to shrink further into hiding, even as more of my neighbors began to leave for their days. I'm not sure how long I was glued there, definitely less than an hour but more than thirty minutes. At least long enough for the sun to start sharpening out the figure.

But suddenly, the realization of my complete lack of safety began to kick in. I'm a twenty-eight year old, small framed woman whose exercise for the week consists of an hour of yoga and doing curls while I watch America's Next Top Model on HULU. I live alone and have never had enough balls to buy my own gun, so there was very little I could do if someone set out to hurt me.

All I knew was that I had to get out of my house and to somewhere safe. Immediately, I began texting Rex, shoving random things into a moderately sized backpack, and stashing loose cash into every pocket on my person. But, of course, as soon as I made it to my front door, a bouquet of assorted flowers sat on my porch.

And now we're here. As we've established, flowers were already not my cup of tea before this fun little experience, but now I'm starting to grow a deep disdain for them. As I sit in my running car, doors and windows locked, clutching on to this cursed vase, I finally come up with the idea to read the card.

Distance makes the heart grow fonder,

but absence makes the hate grow deeper,

and bitches make the world turn slower.

Don't you wish you paid a little more attention?

I kick myself, over and over, for not reading the first note. I wonder what the hell it said.

"You were always too wrapped up in your own world to notice the little things," A voice comes from the back seat of my car. Chills run down my spine. This voice is one I recognized. It's deeper than it used to be, but I had a guy friend named Jamie in college. He was one of those friends who was a little more than a friend, but because of my relationship repulsion, I never even gave him a shot.

It's not like he didn't know, though. This anger, this resentment... it came out of nowhere. We don't even talk anymore. How the hell did he find my house?

"What? Now that I have the power, you have nothing to say?" Jamie climbs to the passenger seat and I catch a glimpse of a long, shiny knife tucked in his left sleeve. My eyes force themselves closed as I beg myself not to cry. Jamie chuckles, assumingly at my terror, "I can tell you're confused. But don't worry. I can help you understand. You see, Val, I was in love with you. The way someone would love the most precious object they own, you know? I wanted to take care of you, to protect you... I wanted to be the person you could always rely on,"

"But you had other plans, right? You didn't want love. You wanted a warm body. You wanted another person to experience life with so you didn't have to hear your own, pathetic thoughts. And that was fun, right? It was college, other people's hearts- our feelings- they don't matter to you, right? As long as you're having fun. You used me. You used me for company, but you didn't want to give me anything back."

"How was I supposed to know what you wanted? You said you were okay with being casual- with not being official. I would've just let you go if I had known-" Unfortunately, I cannot stop the sobs. I'm pretty sure this crazy florist is about to murder me, and I'm not sure if I actually deserve it or not. Before I can finish stammering out an excuse or thought, I'm cut off with one threatening gesture of Jamie's knife.

"I've tried to justify it all in my head. How someone could spend that much time with another person and not even consider trying something serious? It must mean you never had feelings for me. Not even a little. You always saw me as the friend who was a pretty good lay, and I saw you as the center of my world." Jamie shakes his head, "I have one more thing for you, Val."

He pulls a deep red poppy out of his breast pocket and I grab it with a shaky hand. I try to remember if I had read the meaning of poppy. Perhaps it's forgiveness, perhaps this is just one messed up prank that was a confession of his past love and an announcement of him letting it go.

The knife moves faster than I can remember that poppies are one of the very few flowers that signify an early death.