a woman & her flowers
...the flowers were alive in her hands, alive as she cut open their bodies and explored their secrets. She knows so much about them now. Like getting to know a lover’s body, her knowledge of them comes to her through touch. Through the long spans of time she spends exploring their bodies with her fingers and her eyes. Even now, she touches their petals, small fans and blades and cups made from some mystery between gossamer cartilage, giving the flowers their shape. She holds them by their little bulb like receptacles; the thickened ends where their organs sleep, and strokes their pistils.
These, she knows, are the heart of the flower, the complicated tangles of stigma, style, ovary. All the flowers female parts spread open and surrounded by the stamen, its antlers and filaments. Cupping them in her palms, exploring their bodies with her fingers, she can trace their singular lonely sex, small closed circles of solo pleasure.
Carefully she chose the flowers to draw that day, their petals cold as she lifts them from the frosted box and removes their wax paper wrappers. First, she cuts them open to display their insides, each flower is to be drawn whole and in cross section. The buds cut easy under her sharp steel knife. It's the pistil and stamen that are hard. Prone to falling apart at the gentlest touch or resisting the blade, so the whole bud rolls the knife dangerously towards her fingers. She works slowly, her tea forgotten. The flowers leaving their dew and honey on the blade, pale pearly gleam on the steel and she resisted the temptation to lick it away, feeling her sex grow warm.
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