The Language of Flowers

by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

“There’s rosemary; that’s for remembrance. I’m quoting Shakespeare; you’ll read him in high school. And there’s columbine, desertion; holly, foresight; lavender, mistrust.”

“I believe you can prove everyone wrong, too, Victoria. Your behavior is a choice; it isn’t who you are.”

Mistletoe. I surmount all obstacles.

Columbine symbolized both desertion and folly; poppy, imagination and extravagance. The almond blossom, listed as indiscretion in Elizabeth’s dictionary, appeared in others as hope and occasionally thoughtlessness. The definitions were not only different, they were often contradictory. Even common thistle—the staple of my communication—appeared as misanthropy only when it wasn’t defined as austerity.

It wasn’t as if the flowers themselves held within them the ability to bring an abstract definition into physical reality. Instead, it seemed that Earl, and then Bethany, walked home with a bouquet of flowers expecting change, and the very belief in the possibility instigated a transformation.

I had been loyal to nothing except the language of flowers. If I started lying about it, there would be nothing left in my life that was beautiful or true.

knew right then that you felt unworthy, that you believed yourself to be unforgivably flawed.”

“Do you really think you’re the only human being alive who is unforgivably flawed? Who’s been hurt almost to the point of breaking?”

If it was true that moss did not have roots, and maternal love could grow spontaneously, as if from nothing, perhaps I had been wrong to believe myself unfit to raise my daughter. Perhaps the unattached, the unwanted, the unloved, could grow to give love as lushly as anyone else.

Over time, we would learn each other, and I would learn to love her like a mother loves a daughter, imperfectly and without roots.