The flowers in the garden were a lot different in the gray weather. Usually, when it was sunny, they stood up with the confidence unbeknownst to even the most secure person that walked the face of the earth. I was not used to being out in the world. On most Sundays, I dreaded the Monday morning blues that were ahead of me. I was no different from most people, deliberating about their commute that would take them to their desk job to rot away. I stood there on the wet pavement, a stone slab that had been put there by a generation before me. This garden was built by a bunch of people who had been in and out of Brooklyn. I was in the midst of it, somehow in the ripple of chaotic time in search of the words to say what I was thinking.
“So where do I start?” I asked.
I stood by my guide, a man who had been tending to the garden for the past 5 years. He taught me how to deadhead a rose.
“You’re going to want to cut here,” he said.
He pointed to the branch with 5 leaves.
“It’s time that these ones go.”
He snipped at a few branches, and I followed suit. I snipped with the fiskars. I did it without saying much. I zoned in on the bush, in search of the reasons why I had made specific choices in my life. Therein lay regret. Sadness. Acceptance.
Why was I here? What was I looking for?
“If you cut them in a way, the energy will make the roses bloom there.”
“What about these ones?”
I pointed at a few dead spaces where the petals looked as they had withered.
“Sometimes it’s good to keep those there. Perhaps it’s aesthetic value, but the branch may not be not quite ready to let it go.”
“Interesting.”
“Yeah, one day they may grow there.”
He pointed at the center of the bush. It was blank of the bright pink petals. One day they would bloom there. But for now, they were just leaves.
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