I Threw Away Flowers Today

Dear Delyara, They had gone soft around the edges and started smelling faintly wrong. I took them out of the vase, wrapped them in newspaper, and put them in the bin. It should have been simple, but it made me unexpectedly sad. Maybe because I remembered when they were fresh. Maybe because I knew exactly how quickly something beautiful can become one more thing to manage if you leave it too long. I think women understand dying flowers better than most people. The beauty, the effort, the maintenance, the timing, the guilt of not changing the water soon enough, the quiet disappointment when something lovely passes its best without anyone noticing in time. It wasn’t about flowers. It rarely is.