I carried a bouquet of imaginary flowers around for most of my life. If anyone tried to tell me they weren’t real I would dispute them. “They are real to me,” I would say and hold them just a little bit closer. To me, they were the most beautiful flowers in the world although I recognized they had their quirks. Some were brilliantly colored but their petals were a bit tattered at the edges. Others appeared delicate but my fingers would bleed from their thorns if I touched them in just the right place. There were a few that were slow to bloom but when they did I was stunned by how they caught the light and made the bouquet complete. Finally, there were those that stayed stunted and gray with just a touch of green in the stem and a bud that never opened up to reveal itself. I carried it anyway, always hopeful.

When I think of my bouquet of imaginary flowers I can’t help but remember how protective I was of it. I think about how I watered it and made sure it received plenty of sunshine and fresh air because that’s what I thought it needed to thrive. How, when I showed it to others, I would turn it so the tattered petals of one flower was turned toward me and any thorns were hidden by glossy, green leaves. “Those leaves are amazing,” people would say and I would agree. I hid my fingers well. Believe it or not, there are people who love imaginary bouquets and they don’t want to hear about thorns. I was happy to oblige them.

While out for a walk one day, I found myself near a field covered in flowers of every shape, size and color. There were people of every shape, size and color there, too. Some were bent over as they looked closely at the flowers in the field. Other people stood tall, squinted their eyes against the brightness of the sun and craned their necks to look up, up, up. The flowers they were looking at were enormous and the colors so brilliant against the blue sky that they couldn’t help but stare, completely entranced, until their eyes burned and they had to look away. It was quite a meadow. I put my bouquet of imaginary flowers down and joined them. The smell of the earth combined with the scent of the flowers and their herbal leaves was intoxicating. We didn’t pick the flowers or dig them up to be transplanted later into our own gardens. Instead, we embraced them completely and at the same time, let them be.

Later, I went to retrieve my imaginary bouquet and found it exactly where I had left it. I thought it probably needed water and some sunshine, too. Some of the petals were bruised from being tossed on the ground but I was sure they would recover with some attention. I reached down to pick the bouquet up and my fingers swept right through it. Again and again I tried but couldn’t grasp it. In the end, I left my imaginary bouquet where I had dropped it and walked away. The sun was setting and the smell of the earth combined with the scent of the flowers swirled about in my mind as I headed toward home.