To Become a Bouquet

The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast.

(Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations)

WRAPPING FILM

Hello there, sun!

Glad to see you again. Before we’ve completely lost our petals and dried up, we hasten to tell you what amazing thing we’ve learned: it’s not only us who get gathered into bouquets; walking plants sometimes become bouquets themselves — now and then. But let’s take it one flower at a time.

First Flower. Separately and Together

They took us out one by one — picking the special ones from among the stems of our brethren — and laid us on something rustling and shiny.

Our journey didn’t begin here. Before, we had roots, and the roots were in the soil, and that was the most proper way. Some of us already knew each other back then — the gypsophila and the narcissus had seen each other in neighboring beds, the tulips also grew nearby, but we only met the chrysanthemums here — they were brought from another place.

“Here” means on shelves in vessels of water, to the right, to the left, above, below — everywhere. It became more cramped but more interesting — so many new acquaintances! We chattered away without pause.

…And now they were taking us out and putting us together, taking us out and putting us together. That’s how we — tulips, dianthus, narcissus, and the others — suddenly found ourselves very close. Just in case, we decided to stick together and slowly began intertwining our twigs and leaves so as not to be separated.

Two figures loomed over us — two walking flowers called “people” when there’s more than one of them, and “person” when alone. We had seen one of them before; she was usually addressed as “Hello.” She had long black aerial roots and dark, deer-like eyes. How we feared them at first! Panther eyes would have been better! From generation to generation, this knowledge was passed down: panther eyes will pass by without a glance, but from deer eyes, expect trouble. But it turned out that Hello was very kind: when we were brought here, she arranged us in the vessels, and afterward, she added fresh water and made sure we didn’t dry out.

So now we weren’t afraid. Especially since the second person had noticeably shorter and less dense aerial roots, though he also had them on his face, beneath the protrusion through which walking plants breathe. We didn’t know his name, but his eyes resembled a fox’s and didn’t frighten us at all.

When there were so many of us that we were lying on top of each other, they stopped. The rustling, shiny thing turned out to be a film, and Hello wrapped us in it and tied us with a ribbon, deftly using her branches. Being together in one bundle didn’t feel as proper as having roots in the soil, but we had to accept it. We had already gotten to know each other; the company turned out to be quite good.

“Did you hear? They’re calling us a bouquet,” whispered the dianthus, who had been eavesdropping on the people.

“But we’re flowers!” the tulips rustled in bewilderment.

“I am definitely still a flower,” declared the narcissus with confidence.

“That’s all true, separately we are flowers,” said the chrysanthemum. “But now, all together, in a bundle, we are a bouquet.”

The decorative branches remained meaningfully silent in confirmation of her words.

We had become a bouquet.

Second Flower. A Walk

The man took us from Hello’s hands and carried us out into the light. A chaos of air swirled around us. It was a bit cool; gusts of wind tousled our buds and shoots. The most exposed leaves curled up slightly to avoid losing heat.

“What strange creatures!” marveled the tulips. “The colder it is outside and the less sun there is, the more leaves they grow. Remember, not long ago, people came to Hello completely overgrown, in several layers? And yet outside, it was freezing…”

“Where I grew up, it was rather hot,” agreed the chrysanthemum. “There, walking flowers didn’t bloom, but on the contrary, they shed their leaves down to a single thin layer of petals.”

“Where is he carrying us? When will he stop?” complained the ranunculi, tired of the rocking.

The man kept walking. Along the way, we saw other people appearing and disappearing at the various caves that towered everywhere. The observant dianthus suggested that these caves were like beds where they would grow peacefully if they had roots — but without roots, the walking flowers wandered like tumbleweeds everywhere and could take root nowhere.

We stopped at a shelter where moving boxes were pulling up. People entered and exited them, sometimes followed on long straps by other walking plants — short ones on four stems, completely covered either in stamens or down. It was hard to keep track of everything. Our companion rummaged in the folds of his leaves, took out a small stick, lit it with a fire that flashed from his branch, and began inhaling its smoldering.

“Is that leaves?” worried the gypsophila, sniffing the smoke. “Is he burning plants?”

“Leaves, just leaves,” snorted the narcissus. “Fallen ones anyway. When fallen leaves lie for a long time, they become soil. Maybe this is a new way of making compost directly in the air — a useful thing!”

The tulips trustingly reached toward the smoke and immediately choked. The smoke was acrid and unpleasant. The whole bouquet agreed that there was no benefit in it and grumbled in various voices, wishing the stick would burn out already. Only the decorative branches remained stoically silent.

But the man was clearly enjoying the smoke. Then, when the stick was finished, he simply began to wait. Not knowing why or for what, we waited too.

Third Flower. The River

Finally, a box stopped nearby: another person emerged from it and rushed toward us.

“Look!” rejoiced the ranunculi. “Just like Hello!”

“Only her eyes are like a forest bird’s, not a deer’s,” noted the dianthus. “And her aerial roots are light yellow, not black…”

“That’s a woman,” nodded the chrysanthemum. “Walking flowers have two separate sexes, male and female. Those with long aerial roots and bright petals are called women. Like Hello.”

The woman fell upon our man, they intertwined their branches, and began pressing against each other, forgetting that we were between them. The wrapping of our bouquet crackled, and we felt uneasy. It was as if we had fallen into a huge mouth that had decided to eat us: jaw on one side, jaw on the other.

Thank the sun, it didn’t last long. The people unclasped — not completely, they continued holding on with one branch each — and we ended up with the woman, who carried us onward.

What other wonders and encounters awaited us? No sooner had we wondered than our companions passed through a gap between the rows of cave-beds, then another, and suddenly found themselves beside a huge flow of water.

“This is incredible!” the gypsophila trembled with delight.

The tulips and ranunculi also gasped and marveled, and indeed everyone was excited. Only the narcissus tried to pretend nothing special was happening. And the chrysanthemum, without any superiority (and where had she learned so much on her bed?), simply and good-naturedly explained:

“They call it a river.”

A river… We watched as if spellbound. So much water, no roots could ever drink it all! Our companions were apparently impressed too and moved along the river, hoping to find its source. But the river had no beginning, just as it had no end.

“Surely, after such a sight, they’ll want to have roots like ours!” breathed the gypsophila.

“People are too fussy. And roots, mind you, take time,” said the narcissus with an air of importance, as if he hadn’t just stated the obvious.

The decorative branches remained tactfully silent.

Meanwhile, our companions moved away from the river and entered a new cave-bed.

Fourth Flower. The Fall

Here, it was nothing like at Hello’s: noisy, bright, bustling. Many walking flowers sat around flat elevations, chatting and clinking something shiny in their branches.

At the entrance, we were met by a person wrapped in white petals, who obligingly escorted us to a similar flat elevation. On it lay dried white leaves covered in small black patterns. We had seen this before at Hello’s and knew it was language. People turned their sounds into these patterns, and then with a single glance, they heard them inside themselves as if they were sounding again.

Our companions ran their branches over the patterned leaves, the person in white petals nodded, and soon a great variety of human food was brought to them. It was interesting to look at its strange shapes, colors, and sizes — until the gypsophila noticed that the food also contained pieces of plants.

“Maybe they do want to eat us after all?” worried the tulips, to which the chrysanthemum reasonably replied:

“No. They would have eaten us long ago if they intended to.”

When there was less food and the people had poured two or three small vessels of burgundy water into themselves, the one who had brought us from Hello’s suddenly half-rose from his place and fell. Well, almost — he managed to land on one of his mobile stems, extending the other half-bent in front of him. A small red box with a tiny shiny ring inside appeared in his branches as if from nowhere.

“Oh, he fell! Get up, get up quickly!” worried the gypsophila.

The woman indeed jumped up, but she didn’t help him up. Instead, she reached out her branch to him, and the man placed the ring onto one of her shoots. The corners of the woman’s eyes filled with large drops of dew.

They threw themselves at each other again, just as they had when they met, and pressed together, intertwining their branches, for a long, long time. For some reason, this sight warmed us, as if we had been illuminated by invisible rays of the sun. As if their intertwining was also a pattern of an unknown language, and we had suddenly learned to read it and heard inside ourselves: kindness, love, light.

Fifth Flower. The Greenhouse

When we came back outside, you, sun, had already rolled beyond the edge of visibility, and night had taken your place. But in the human kingdom, darkness did not fall: the giant cave-beds continued to glow with a mysterious light. The small moving boxes also glowed and blinked. Our companions climbed into one of them without untwining their branches.

Inside, it was cramped, dark, and there was no wind at all. On all sides, the box had little transparent walls.

“It’s a greenhouse!” the tulips guessed.

“That would be nice, but we’re thirsty,” complained the delicate ranunculi, as always.

They were right: some desiccation was already beginning to be felt, and now one, now another of us began to sigh and rustle deliberately loudly, trying in vain to attract the people’s attention. Only the decorative branches stoically endured their thirst in silence.

The picture in the transparent walls of the greenhouse shifted and raced away. The restlessness of human life was astonishing: tired of walking on their mobile stems, they used little greenhouses to continue moving. What drove them? Where to? Why couldn’t they stay forever where they were given food, water, warmth to grow? We didn’t understand.

Sixth Flower. Reaching Water

…And now, a new cave-bed! Entering it, our companions walked upward for a while, then turned behind a partition and stopped.

There were no people or other walking plants in this cave, but real ones grew: tradescantia, sansevieria, crassula, and others whose names we didn’t know.

“Hello!” the tulips rustled to them.

They tried to sound friendly, though they too were beginning to dry out.

The houseplants remained silent in response. Perhaps they simply didn’t hear us — and we no longer had the strength to greet them more loudly.

The woman carried us into some corner. She waved her branches, and water began to flow from the wall. Although the stream was moderate, it also looked as endless as the river. We just needed to reach it — but how?..

Something sharp glinted in the woman’s branch. For a moment, everyone panicked! But then we remembered Hello and trusted her: surely she knew what she was doing and meant no harm. And so it turned out: with this sharp thing, the woman shortened our stems slightly — this made the water even easier to drink — then took out a tall vessel, filled it, and placed us in it. At last! We drank greedily and soon became saturated with moisture to the point of complete bliss. Desiccation gave way once more to sincere curiosity about the surrounding world, filled with inexplicable wonders.

From the vessel, we could clearly see our companions, again intertwining their branches.

Seventh Flower. The Human Bouquet

Meanwhile, they intertwined tighter and tighter, gradually shedding all their upper leaves until only bare stems and branches remained. Falling onto a wide soft elevation, our companions finally became completely entangled and, with trembling breath, began to grow into each other. Evidently, this had been their intention from the very beginning, and the point of all the previous trial squeezings and entwinings had been precisely this. They had simply been searching for suitable soil all this time, and at last they had found it. The clever dianthus understood everything before the others and exclaimed:

“They… They intend to become a bouquet!”

But something went wrong with the growing-together. They tried to fuse on one side, then on the other, puffing with effort, but in the end, nothing worked — they even started crying out in frustration.

Never mind, we thought. In our bouquet, we didn’t intertwine with roots either — we don’t even have them. We simply accepted our unity and became a bouquet.

So, when the people grew tired and merely intertwined their branches, wrapping themselves in a large piece of cloth, they had, in our opinion, achieved what they were striving for.

That’s what a human bouquet looks like. Two walking flowers wrapped together, with contented faces and dew that had broken out upon them.

Wrapping. Tied with a Ribbon

Goodbye, sun!

So we have told you of the miracle we witnessed. Time flies, and our time is not eternal. Some leaves have already fallen, but we do not regret our fate. We have been privileged to see more than some plants see in several generations. Only one thing is sad — there are no bees here at all, so we will have to lose our petals and dry up without ever being pollinated. But the woman regularly adds water to our vessel to replace what we drink, so we will last for a long time yet.

And we will greet you again, when you once more peer through the transparent walls into our cave-bed.

(January 2026)

Yavan Chirik