Lillie McFerrin hosts a Five Sentence Fiction competition on her blog. This week’s theme is Flowers.
Here is my entry, which is inspired by the picture this week:
“On the saying of something or other with something that is pretty much already dead but still smells nice for a while at least”
by Dr. Mike Reddy (@doctormikereddy)
“I don’t get it,” he said, rocking back and forth and chewing on his knuckle, “Why is it nice to kill something, then give it to someone?”
He rarely did ‘get it’ but this was knuckle-chewingly bad, so I put down my work things and turned to pay him my full attention.
“Someone spends a lot of time and effort, Oh and water and sun, although the Sun is free I guess, and the plants grow, and then they are killed, yes?” he asked in one hasty breath.
“Well, people like the colours and the smell and the fact that someone took the trouble to bring them a gift,” I explained.
“So, people like the fact that these bright smelly things were killed just for them!” he said sadly, but at least the rocking had stopped for now.
Way to make someone sit up and take notice! Well done as usual. I will never look at the gift of flowers again. 🙂
It’s always good to get another perspective on things! Nice story!
Yes, the giving of flowers whilst a beautiful token, is quite the strange ritual, when you think about it. Well done on making us think!
good write, have a nice Sunday
much love…
He would be heart-broken to find out that it’s pretty much the same with most gifts–leather goods, food, even jewelry are a result or byproduct of some form of killing.
Oh look what you’ve done! Writing that just made me sad.
Out of the mouths of babes. Well done, Mike.
It does seem sad but then some flowers need to be cut so the will continue to bloom. Liked the different perspective.