Lessons from flowers

womanhood, queerness and blossoming

Flowers bloom when they are ready. Not a moment before, not a moment after.

Some push through the frost, impatient and trembling, petals still curled tight against the cold. Others quietly wait in bud form long after the first warmth arrives, appearing only when the summer sun is seated in the sky.

Some open all at once, in great, generous swells, like giant baby pink rhododendrons, impossible to ignore. Others are quieter and less urgent. The wild violets that hide in the hedgerows. The first scattering of cow parsley, a welcome sugar coating on the countryside roads.

Now, in this equinox tide, the shift is unmistakable. Spring is no longer a suggestion, but something real.

The daffodils stand tall, proud in their yolky brightness. Cherry blossom drifts onto the pavement like discarded silk. The magnolia blooms, soft and translucent, as though it belongs to another time altogether.

Image credit: unknown

Nothing here competes. No flower waits for permission. No bloom questions whether …