Sitting In Solitary Splendour
Six Word Photo Story Challenge — Freestyle
I don’t want to be alone.
I never envisaged being so naked, so alone. Waiting.
My parent plant grew well, I’m told, and I remember all my sibling flowers, white as snow that never fell during the cleansing winter, despite the cold.
I recall the rain, the seemingly endless rain; trying to bob my flower-head beneath a sheltering leaf, having the leaf torn away by the persistent northern wind. But we all did that, standing together leaf to leaf, unafraid in our wood-edged bed.
The whisper was that Spring was late. We’d still thrive; we’d be okay; the sun would shine, and the bees would buzz among us.
Something buzzed among us, I’m not sure what. I never saw a bee. But the sun did shine, between the rain. The seemingly endless rain. My petals faded. I and my siblings became plump and green.
We’d be red soon. It became the excited chatter on sunnier days, first pink and then red, then… chosen.
But the clouds gathered and stayed. The rain returned, and it was so cold. Deserted by the sunshine, we hung limp on our stalks.
I don’t know when it started, the thumps of green fruit dropping. We clung on, my siblings…
