🪷 Everything That Bloomed Anyway | A Short Story
No one ever notices the seed. People admire gardens all the time. They stop to photograph flowers, lean closer to inhale their fragrance, and speak with admiration about color and beauty and growth. They praise what can be seen. They celebrate what has already become something recognizable. But no one kneels beside a patch of empty earth and applauds the seed. No one watches it disappear into darkness and says, Look at how brave that is. The seed is expected to endure quietly. It is expected to break without complaint. To split open beneath pressure and somehow understand that destruction is part of the process. I think about that often. Especially when people tell me they're proud of how far I've come. Because they only know the flower. They never met the seed. They never saw what happened underground. Years ago, before anyone could have looked at me and seen resilience, before there was anything visible enough to admire, there was only darkness. Not the dramatic kind people...