The wind sweeps its cool arms through the window making an eerie whistling sound as it fiddles with the soft green, floral curtains that hang drowsily against the wall. The silky fabric beats gently against the kitchen chairs and the pages on the calendar flicker with every new push. The clock in the corner ticks monotonously, cutting through the silence with every stroke and echoing against the walls of the small room. Every once in a while the faint chirp of a cheery bird or the droning of a far off lawn mower will chime in. Overhanging the window opposite are horizontal blinds that slice the suns rays into rectangular blocks that stretch and scatter over the surface of the table.
It is here where it sits.
Perfectly placed in the centre of the wooden table is an elegantly designed crystal vase with intricate patterns that simplify as they snake down the sides. It contains a beauty that doesn’t demand to be seen, it instead prides itself in showing off the beauty it holds within it. However the whole image has been nullified by the flowers’ lack of cooperation. They are dying. Their petals are wilting into faded colours of purple, red and pink. Their faces are downcast as if yearning for rich, dark soil to sink their crippling bodies into. They bathe in foul, murky water that has turned into a diluted, dark mustard colour and flakes of decayed plant matter lie underneath the mouldy plant stems. Kamikaze petals lay strewn around the base, a sick smell of rotting green flesh corrupts the once innocent air and the aura of death embeds itself into every thread of attempted beauty.
The ticking clock is now a mockery, a constant reminder of what is to come. Every piece of the scene suddenly alludes to the inevitability of the flowers’ fate. They will all come to the same end, regardless of their colour, shape or design. They have been neglected, forgotten and forced into a shadow of a once satisfied existence and now what previously fit into this peaceful scene has become the ruin of it.
Are they a product of a broken heart; hated yet still a part of the person that can’t be let go? Have they been forgotten by the infinitely happy whose mind is consumed by that of their beloved? Or are they just another symbol of the increasingly languid and self-destructive world we inhabit. Either way, someone has quite literally failed ‘to stop and smell the roses’ and now you wouldn't dare to.
Perhaps one day they will be replaced by new life and the picture will once again be complete, but for now it will remain a bitter sweet contradiction.
