# As I Received Flowers The petals arrived before the stems, a confusion of color without root, and I stood in the doorway wondering what kind of gift comes backwards. They were beautiful, certainly— the kind of beauty that makes you sad because you know it's already dying, already thinking about the vase, about water that will turn brown, about the day you'll sweep them from the table into the bin. I arranged them anyway, the way women are taught to arrange things: with patience, with an eye for balance, with the small cruelty of the knife that shortens stems to fit whatever container we've decided will hold them. They opened in the heat of the room. They opened the way promises do— slowly at first, then all at once, drowning in their own generosity. I watered them each morning, spoke to them sometimes, the way lonely people do, and they nodded their heavy heads as if they understood, as if they too were trying to stand upright in a world that wanted them bent into beauty. When they finally fell, I did not replace them. The vase sat empty on the shelf, and I found I preferred it that way— the memory of flowers to the flowers themselves, the idea of being given something to the thing itself, which always, always teaches you about endings.