Paper Flowers

Today's muse:

I am a legal secretary with a large law firm. One of the reasons I like working here is that the firm promotes the creativity of its employees. For instance, Re: the magazine is published twice a year, available to all employees worldwide as well as our clients. The publication showcases the diversity of talent within our firm: philanthropists, world travellers, photographers and writers.

Issue 4 had a writing competition. Using the three words provided (earth, spring, paper), write exactly one hundred words (no more, no less...we are a law firm, after all).

My submission, Paper Flowers, is the featured story in Issue 5.

Click on the link to view the full publication (I think the editor selected the perfect picture to accompany it) and read other published prose.

Re:, Issue 5, page 54

* * *

Paper Flowers

Evelyn Fischer visits her son every day; shows up each morning with a basket of fresh flowers and her best trowel. As she tends his tiny garden, Evelyn updates Nathan with family news.

Prattling on about his daughter’s new tooth and his son’s school recital, she yanks out weeds that seem to spring up overnight. She digs shallow craters in the moist earth, then selects new buds from her basket and replaces every bloom.

I asked her once why she wastes her time planting paper flowers.

Her milky, grey eyes shifted to mine.

“Because they can’t die,” she said.