Dandelion Sun
Dandelions bloom in my backyard again. They grow in folds, long and yellow, peeks of sunshine poking through trees. They grow over the ant bed at the bottom of my backyard and cover it up. When the grass dries up, the mound will poke out like a pimple. I wonder if the ants dry up too.
At my elementary school, I imagine dandelions make up the entire field. A sea, bobbing in the wind. When I used to attend, that’s how it looked. Like a field of untouched snow in the winter. It felt like the dandelions are infinite, covering every inch of ground in their yellow petals.
Dandelions have two major stages of life. Yellow flower and white seed. Sunshine and golf ball. No matter the amount of videos I watch on the transformation, it still amazes me how quickly it shifts from form to form.
White dandelions used to rely on the wind to reproduce. Nowadays, white dandelions rely on children who love to pluck their seeds and throw it to the wind. They rely on children to blow the seeds off of their stems. Perhaps, if the children are as curious as I was, they’d rip the changing seeds from their protective wombs to see what’s inside. To get a good look.
I know that the children roaming my old elementary school yard, through the ocean of yellow dandelions, are going to get a good look. They don’t know where the seeds go. They only know that when the white dandelions show up, the lumpy bulbs will be more than enough.
Maybe they will also pluck the dandelion stem off. Tear it in half and squeeze it. If you were lucky, there would be a milky substance running out of the broken stem. None of us kids wanted the substance to touch us, but we all wanted the substance to come out.
The white substance is latex, produced by a defense mechanism. Now when I think of latex allergies, I think of bodies fighting hoards of dandelions, watching them float away to be reborn in the skies above. I think of skies being covered by white dandelion seeds like parachute soldiers.
A dandelion’s shifting form is almost like the shifting form of water. From ice to snow to mist to clouds. All changing. All transforming.
A few days ago, the sky transformed too. It grew misty. The misty sky greeted me as I stepped off of the bus to begin walking home. The sun shone orange. I noticed the change in the sun, but didn’t remember the cause. It is a currently infrequent event.
The sunset sun is a burning red. Crayola red. I can stare straight into it and feel no pain towards my eyes. It stares directly back at me. The sun is transforming as our world does the same.
There are no rain clouds in the sky. Only smoke clouds.
There are major and mostly uncontrolled wildfires a few provinces over. The smoke rises so thickly it travels on wind currents like rivers to us here in Masadam-Yae.
It’s surprisingly early for such major wildfires to be occurring. May just began. We still have June, July, August — hotter days and hotter months are yet to come. I figure that, as I grow older, the smoke-filled skies and poppy sunsets are going to be much more regular in the summer. I wonder how much I can take before the soot grows dandelions in my lungs.
The dandelions and the smoke are quite alike in their eagerness to fly. To rise above everything and float, watching the luminescent city and the congested highways as they find a new home. Runaway stories and free bird stories have their origins in dandelions and smoke. Stories of those who wish no home on themselves.
I envy them sometimes. I cannot float freely and unobstructed. I am not a bird. I am not a faeri.
The shifting dandelion is our world. The wildfires are the bells of change. As are the rising sea levels and melting glaciers. I don’t have the solution nor the authority to speak on the issue. But I can speak on the freedom of the dandelions. They will stay free, long after we have disappeared into the ocean currents.
In the dandelions and the smoke, I see freedom and life. Maybe if the dandelions drown in the ocean’s high tides, then our eyes will widen at our losses. I wonder who will jump to catch the last dandelion seed, blowing to the ocean to join its siblings in arms and sleep of the ebb of the sea floor against the flooded pier.
Until then, I can wait for the yellow dandelions to bloom white in my backyard.
— Heleza
