A Memory in Bloom

The roses would only speak at sunrise. Mae spent the night reading her aunt’s notebooks, each page filled with planting dates and impossible descriptions.

The blue flowers remembered thunderstorms. The white ones remembered promises. A black orchid, locked in a cabinet, remembered only the future.

At dawn, the first rose offered Mae an image of a train station, a red scarf and a boy waving from behind a crowded platform.

Mae pressed a hand to her mouth. She knew that station. She had dreamed of it for years. The key in her palm began to glow.