she says, only flowers

I only want to eat flowers
Photo by Sarah Anne Childers

Photo by Sarah Anne Childers

“I only want to eat flowers,” she says, easing her long body onto the grass and nibbling a nasturtium plucked from the tumble between her garden and mine behind the quaint old homes neither of us own. She is usually not so whimsical; I pay attention. “I’m afraid to eat anything else,” she says.

She keeps losing consciousness. Her heart can’t find a regular beat. She has spent another night in the hospital perplexing the doctors who gather at her metal bed. Her diagnosis still illusive, she is exhausted.

I take off my soiled gloves and as she speaks the mysteries of heart-hurt, I behead purple-black bachelor buttons until my palms overflow with pom-poms. Adding calendula petals and pale peppered nasturtium leaves, I offer her a fairy’s supper. 


Sarah Anne Childers is the online editor at luciajournal.com where she toggles between curating creatives as an editor and creatively curating ideas and the words they live in as a writer. 

sarah@luciajournal.com