The Shine Journal

Flowers

by

Daniel Casebeer

I stole a flower from each of the lavender vases in the café while she browsed through the chapbooks in the poetry section. I hid them in my coat: two orange lilies and four pink snap dragons. The alarm went off as we tried to leave. An aging hipster, pretentiously in his forties, grabbed me by the wrist. What happened next occurred as a series of snapshots. In the first image, the hipster, one hand on his belt, was pulling me into the store. In the next image, the air was full of flowers. In the final image, one that started moving in mid sentence, we were racing across the parking lot. Two broken snap dragons dangled from the mouth of my sleeve. When we got to the car, I saw that her purse was filled with books. One by one, she placed them on the dashboard. Then, brushing the hair from my forehead, she thanked me for the flowers.

MOTIVATION: The motivation behind "Flowers" can be traced to a greenhouse in central Pennsylvania. I used to crawl under the long beds of flowers, and I can remember, from a very young age, the heady scent of snap dragons mingling with the smoke in my hair. I am also a tremendous fan of independent bookstores, and I wanted to write a story that combined my passions for flowers and poetry.

BIO: Daniel Casebeer is a high school English teacher. He lives in Pittsburgh.

Photo by: Anna Maria Damasiewicz.