Weekly Writing – July 29 2023

Nothing but white lilies, as far as the eye can see.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. It was supposed to be a foolproof weapon, seeds scattered on the wind. Biological warfare sealed in a husk that would only break on contact with hatred.
The sort they had for us. Roots that would only tunnel into murderous loathing, the sort that shone the same gunmetal shade from their rifles and eyes.
It was supposed to tear all their hate apart from the inside. Only them, only the ones who waited outside the walls with their rifles and gaunt cheeks and gunmetal eyes. By the time we realized those roots and glorious flowers were spilling out bloody from everyone, never mind the wind or which side of the walls they were on, it was too late.
Nothing but lilies. We, the three of us, the ones who should have known better, haven’t left this room in three days. Jackets stuffed in the vents, around the seams of the door…we three who should have seen this coming stare down at it from the plate-glass windows, a twentieth-floor panoramic view of our city transformed into a silent garden.
Last night’s rain washed the flowers clean. The gutters ran like arteries, first thin, rinsing pink, then swelling, eddying red. Now, there’s just the white.
Now, we wait. We tell each other we’re trying to think of a way to set it right. None of us ask for whom.
None of us say what we all know – there’s no one left to set it right for. No one but we three, and all we deserve now is an open window.
We won’t have a choice soon. We’ll die of thirst while rain streams silver down the windows, or we’ll take our jackets away from the seams of the door. We’ll creep out as covered as we can be, as if that helped anyone else, and we’ll still talk about setting things right, finding food and water and then setting things right, until the first flowers burst from our skin and we die screaming instead.
And wondering. I’ll die wondering. Were we wrong from the start? Would those seeds have taken root in any flesh, any warm, porous surface they could find? Or is there hate enough in everyone to nurture them, more than we ever realized?
I’ll die hoping it’s the former. I’d rather choke on roots believing it’s my own fault, that I helped kill something beautiful, than that I unleashed justice on something uglier than I ever realized.