“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