The flowers in San Francisco bloom all year
around. They come in dozens of shades
and shapes, from iridescent
purples to buttery yellows. Blossoms
that dangle, trumpet-like from trees,
thick blooms on bushes, and clusters
of pinprick petals, huddled
tight to the ground.
The flowers in this city
have never heard of winter,
never felt the sting
of frost on tender leaf, never seen
the tragedy of buds unfurling
in the bitter cold. I have spent ten winters
afloat in snow. White dust crumbling
from the sky, promising nothing, falling like
powdered sugar
on neon-green lawns. The flowers there
know nothing of San Francisco winters.
Much like the people in the towns they
inhabit, the snow-doomed blossoms
have never felt the careless abundance
of sunlight in December. They only
know the salt and soil
of a Midwestern winter,
where one does not shy away
from the end of things, knowing
that death itself is just a season. Spring
will come, with its covenant of light,
and once more, the flowers will grow.
Angel Bista
Angel Bista is a San Francisco-based writer and poet, with lived experience in Michigan and Nepal. As a third-culture kid, she has always been interested in exploring the emotional distance between spaces. She currently writes for the history archive, Brown History, and publishes work on her Substack, playscapes.