truth

The girl wandered through the rows of flowers, captivated by their beauty. Bending down to inspect each one, she stared for hours into the small world that existed between the petals of every blossom. In her world, everything was big, much larger than herself, but here in her garden she felt like a giant. Peering into a flower she could lose herself for hours, curled up in the flute of a daffodil or exploring the intricacies of a daisy. Nothing was frightening here; everything was scaled to her own petite size.

The flowers spoke in soft voices, never making loud noises like the denizens of the world outside. She was the only one sensitive enough to hear what the flowers said, the only one who would listen to their quiet conversations. They never complained, for they had nothing to complain about. They were never hungry – the sun gave them everything they needed. When the girl tried to explain the feeling she got when her mother couldn’t afford to buy her dinner, the flowers only murmured in subdued confusion. At first they had told her to lie in the sun, and she had tried that, but when she had returned home she was still hungry. The girl wished she could be like the flowers – stationary, in a world that fit, always content and never hungry.

A car alarm in the street below began to wail as the girl’s mother entered the room.

“Lisa Marie, git yoself off that floor an come help Mama get dinna made!”

“But Mama, I hava take cara my flowas o they die,” the girl replied.

“Well, dinna ain’t gun done make isself. ‘Sides, those ain’t no flowas that need carin, they jus drawins you did with yo crayons. Can eat nona those flowas. Now come help Mama make dinna or Mama gun make dinna oudda you!”

“Yes Mama. I be der in uh sec.” the girl replied in a reconciled tone.

“You bedda be, cus I be workin’ all DAY to make sho’ yo ass ain’t starvin’ an I don wanna be doin alla tha cookin too.”

The girl’s mother departed from the room, leaving her lying on the floor between the rows of drawings: lined paper covered in waxy colored scribbles. After her mother was gone, the girl rose to her feet, picked up the flower she just finished drawing on a crumpled piece of paper that she had found on the street, and gracefully moved towards the narrow window that looked out from her bedroom onto the exhausted city outside. When she reached her destination she removed from her pocket a small piece of tape that had become covered in lint between the journey from school to home, and joined her drawing to the windowpane. After this task had been completed, the girl carefully trotted back through her garden to the door. As she left the room, light trickled in through the window over the rows of color, tinted by the sheet of paper the girl had covered in sunflower yellow crayon.