Many thanks, as always, to Rochelle for providing us with Friday Fictioneers. And, another where I get it in just under the wire. Thanks also to Na’ama for this beautiful picture of spring!
There is a meaning for every flower and sometimes a different one for a particular color. I guess we should be careful when we give flowers. 😉
Flowers of Soul
You can turn your face to the sun, embrace its warmth, accept too much is detrimental.
You can take the tulip blossom, caress your bottom lip with its silky petal, acknowledge its meaning, true love, and that some love is predicated on hate, manipulation.
You can marry a man like Franz who promises grace but controls, judges, mocks. Whose words undermine your sense-of-self until you take the duty-bought tulip and grind the petal beneath your heel, endure one last slap before removing all that was Franz from you. Every. Single. Cell.
With found sisters, a garden of yellow tulips flourish: freedom.
end
Well said. Beautifully written.
Thank you, Phyllis! 🙂
I like the sensual nature of this story, the descriptions ’embrace its warmth’; ‘caress your bottom lip with its silky petal’; ‘grind the petal beneath your heel,’ This gives the reader a feeling for the intensity of the initial love affair with Franz; it helps to explain how she was trapped in the first place, despite recognising the danger: ‘accept too much is detrimental’; ‘some love is predicated on hate, manipulation.’
That’s very skilful writing, Sacha!
Many thanks, Penny. I was sitting in the sunshine as I wrote it, so perhaps I owe that brilliant orb some thanks. 🙂
Dear Sascha,
I like the way this begins with sunshine and then takes us to a very. Dark. Place. Well done.
Shalom,
Rochelle
Many thanks, Rochelle. I think I wrote two light ones in a row, so . . . . 😀
I love the use of the tulips as “props” in the story as well as metaphor and the progression from paragraph to paragraph.
Amen to finding freedom! Loved this take and thank you for the kind words about the photo – which, really, did not do justice to the magnificence of our neighborhood garden! 🙂
The mixture of pleasure and threat in the flowers is a clever idea. I like the movement of feeling in this towards the reveal at the end, and the way you’ve foreshadowed that darkness right from the beginning, but subtly.
Beautifully written. The use of the second person is peculiarly effective here
Those flowers are gorgeous and you’re writing makes it even better.
Lovely words
Thank you so much!
Mine pleasure dear