Dahlias
I learned about my mother's love of dahlias
by accident. Mother by omission, she blooms
in benign dissimulation – her opinions
and taste in flowers hidden in plain sight.
Dahlias, then: grandmother planted them.
One year, I asked about the systematic explosion
of reds and pinks and oranges she engineered
in her garden. She said my mother had chosen
white dahlias for her wedding bouquet – I thought
it odd, my mother marrying, electing such a wild,
inelegant outburst: far too many florets to count –
a strange, scentless exercise in fractals, petal
upon petal. A lionhead of a flower. I had never
contemplated which flower, if any, my mother
liked, given that the garden was my father's
domain, his handprint upon everything.
by accident. Mother by omission, she blooms
in benign dissimulation – her opinions
and taste in flowers hidden in plain sight.
Dahlias, then: grandmother planted them.
One year, I asked about the systematic explosion
of reds and pinks and oranges she engineered
in her garden. She said my mother had chosen
white dahlias for her wedding bouquet – I thought
it odd, my mother marrying, electing such a wild,
inelegant outburst: far too many florets to count –
a strange, scentless exercise in fractals, petal
upon petal. A lionhead of a flower. I had never
contemplated which flower, if any, my mother
liked, given that the garden was my father's
domain, his handprint upon everything.
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Lorelei BachtLorelei Bacht (she/they) successfully escaped grey skies and red buses to live and write somewhere in the monsoon forest. Their recent writing has appeared and/or is forthcoming in After the Pause, Barrelhouse, The Bitchin' Kitsch, SWWIM, The Inflectionist Review, Sinking City, Door is a Jar, and elsewhere.
Instagram // @lorelei.bacht.writer Twitter // @bachtlorelei |