The Language of Flowers

by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

desperate and hopeful in a way I had never been before and would never be again.

I lay down in the dirt between the rows, disappearing from sight.

Pity, I knew, was different from love.

I needed to never, under any circumstance, leave any of them again.

Perhaps the unattached, the unwanted, the unloved, could grow to give love as lushly as anyone else.