The Florist Never Asked My Name

I never planted you in my memory—yet everything in me learned how to bloom because of you.

Garden Song — Phoebe Bridgers

If I told you that every thought of you still grows inside me like something alive that refuses to die—

would you still want to know what I’ve become?

Because I think I have turned into a place things keep growing without permission.

I notice you first in the smallest betrayals of memory.

The way your hand rises to fix your hair— slow, absent, certain—

as if even the wind waits for your approval before it moves.

And that becomes a sunflower.

Not bright in a comforting way.

Bright in a way that hurts to look at because it keeps turning even when there is nothing left to face.

Then I remember your laughter.

Not the loud kind that fills rooms—

but the kind that slips through silence like it never meant to stay.

That becomes forget-me-nots.

Small blue things I keep finding in places I swore I already healed from.

On quiet mornings.

In the pause between thoughts.

In the space right before I sleep and right after I remember you.

There are days you said nothing at all.

Not absence.

Not distance.

Just stillness that felt like sitting beside someone who understands silence better than words.

That becomes lilies.

White.

Unmoving.

Too pure for how much they remind me of things I lost without realizing I was losing them.

And then there were your almost-words.

The things you never said but made me feel anyway.

The pauses that carried weight.

The sentences you abandoned halfway through becoming real.

That becomes roses.

Not red.

Never red.

Because red would mean certainty.

These are the color of hesitation learning how to exist without ever fully opening.

I remember evenings too.

When nothing dramatic happened but everything felt irreversible.

You there.

Me there.

The world pretending not to notice how close we were to becoming something else.

That becomes lavender.

Soft.

Quiet.

The kind of memory that still lingers in the air long after the moment is gone and everything else has moved on.

And your disappearing—

not leaving, just slipping inward where no one could follow no matter how close they stood—

that becomes cherry blossoms.

Beautiful only because they never stay.

Only because they teach you how quickly something alive can turn into something remembered.

And then—

there is the one thing I never learned how to say.

That becomes a camellia.

Still blooming in the part of me that never learned how to speak at the right time.

I used to think these were just memories.

But now I understand they are not memories at all.

They are flowers.

And I am not remembering you.

I am growing you.

Every thought.

Every silence.

Every almost.

Every never.

They all bloom here where no one else can see.

And if it is true that every thought of you becomes something that grows—

then I am no longer a person who once loved you.

I am a garden that never stopped.