Jack of Hearts
07-25-2011, 02:13 AM
Paper Flowers
In the tea room there is color. The walls are washed crisply white and lined with rich, maple wood but there is still a myriad of color. There are flowers in the room. There are flowers on the wall.
And there is music too, because the music is silence surrounding my footfalls on hardwood floors. Infront of me, Mrs. Kyogi walks gracefully and with purpose. Mrs. Kyogi is middle aged and beautiful with features carved from the bluish winds sweeping over the icy mountaintops of Japan, yet still a defined mantle of warmness beneath the blackest night that was her dark, straight hair- like night, pulled back and reserved.
I point, “That’ll do.”
She shakes her head and purses her lips. “You will grow tired of it. You tire of it now. Choose better.”
My eyes return to the wall and I see sunlight entering from a small rectangular window across the way. Greedily, as I can have my choice, I want for the best and my eyes devour all until they fall upon an electrically purple blossom with a bright yellow center.
“That’s it,” I suggest, “That’s the one.”
Mrs. Kyogi blinks slowly, just once and then speaks, “Look more closely.”
Her soapstone fingers lift the petals ever so gently into clearer view. And I see…
“Already beginning to wilt. It turns away from the sunlight. It will not last even two more days.”
A sigh escapes my lips and I slouch to the solid ground “Must I choose?”
Mrs. Kyogi says nothing, simply stands and waits for me to ready myself again. The assortment of them all, in one place, at one time, is unearthly; is bewildering. Their greens, their yellows, their reds, their blues, their violets all over take me in different, swelling tides until I am no longer standing atop the sanctity of logical stone beaches, but afloat in an ocean that I can neither understand nor describe.
“Ok.”
A flash in her dark eyes and a slight contortion of her painted lips mark mild displeasure and a more conflicted state. I rise to my feet and breathe in deeply, the aromas over taking me- exotic, otherworldly scents, tempting me, promising me.
Mrs. Kyogi starts to usher me outward, but my eyes fall upon a blossom above the door. It is large, colored black in the center, gracefully wrapped in light brown and whimsically splashed with orange. On the outer edges rested a soft dress of bright yellow petals. It is eccentric, imaginative even, as it poises, thriving in the sunlight. I find myself speaking, barely above an uncertain but more certain whsiper, “That one… That’s the one.”
I stop in place, denying even another step. Mrs. Kyogi turns around and looks at me with confusion in her features. Her unexcitable, wise eyes trace the path from my impassioned face to where my vision rests above the door and she starts to smile. She gracefully moves to it, elongates her elegant form upward, and removes it from the wall. Slowly turning, she extends her cupped hands into mine, the delicate couriers moving as if in dance, flowers in their own right.
And I am holding the flower.
Her smile is a novel I‘ve never read before, containing sadness, alleviation and truth, “It is no flower at all.”
“I don’t understand…”
“You feel it is made of paper.”
I run my fingers over the void in my wondered hands, so invigorated. The futility, the hopelessness and the defeat overcome me as I crumple the falsity to the floor and leave too coolly.
In the tea room there is color. The walls are washed crisply white and lined with rich, maple wood but there is still a myriad of color. There are flowers in the room. There are flowers on the wall.
And there is music too, because the music is silence surrounding my footfalls on hardwood floors. Infront of me, Mrs. Kyogi walks gracefully and with purpose. Mrs. Kyogi is middle aged and beautiful with features carved from the bluish winds sweeping over the icy mountaintops of Japan, yet still a defined mantle of warmness beneath the blackest night that was her dark, straight hair- like night, pulled back and reserved.
I point, “That’ll do.”
She shakes her head and purses her lips. “You will grow tired of it. You tire of it now. Choose better.”
My eyes return to the wall and I see sunlight entering from a small rectangular window across the way. Greedily, as I can have my choice, I want for the best and my eyes devour all until they fall upon an electrically purple blossom with a bright yellow center.
“That’s it,” I suggest, “That’s the one.”
Mrs. Kyogi blinks slowly, just once and then speaks, “Look more closely.”
Her soapstone fingers lift the petals ever so gently into clearer view. And I see…
“Already beginning to wilt. It turns away from the sunlight. It will not last even two more days.”
A sigh escapes my lips and I slouch to the solid ground “Must I choose?”
Mrs. Kyogi says nothing, simply stands and waits for me to ready myself again. The assortment of them all, in one place, at one time, is unearthly; is bewildering. Their greens, their yellows, their reds, their blues, their violets all over take me in different, swelling tides until I am no longer standing atop the sanctity of logical stone beaches, but afloat in an ocean that I can neither understand nor describe.
“Ok.”
A flash in her dark eyes and a slight contortion of her painted lips mark mild displeasure and a more conflicted state. I rise to my feet and breathe in deeply, the aromas over taking me- exotic, otherworldly scents, tempting me, promising me.
Mrs. Kyogi starts to usher me outward, but my eyes fall upon a blossom above the door. It is large, colored black in the center, gracefully wrapped in light brown and whimsically splashed with orange. On the outer edges rested a soft dress of bright yellow petals. It is eccentric, imaginative even, as it poises, thriving in the sunlight. I find myself speaking, barely above an uncertain but more certain whsiper, “That one… That’s the one.”
I stop in place, denying even another step. Mrs. Kyogi turns around and looks at me with confusion in her features. Her unexcitable, wise eyes trace the path from my impassioned face to where my vision rests above the door and she starts to smile. She gracefully moves to it, elongates her elegant form upward, and removes it from the wall. Slowly turning, she extends her cupped hands into mine, the delicate couriers moving as if in dance, flowers in their own right.
And I am holding the flower.
Her smile is a novel I‘ve never read before, containing sadness, alleviation and truth, “It is no flower at all.”
“I don’t understand…”
“You feel it is made of paper.”
I run my fingers over the void in my wondered hands, so invigorated. The futility, the hopelessness and the defeat overcome me as I crumple the falsity to the floor and leave too coolly.