Chlorophyll and Romance
One last petal fell to the ground.
He loves me not. Lies!
Marcie picked yet another daisy from her mother’s garden and pulled off one petal at a time until there was only one.
He loves me not. Not possible!
She moved to some honest looking clematis near the house. She selected the biggest, most beautiful purple she could find. This one MUST know the truth. Wasn’t there some kind of saying about beauty and truth? That beauty has it or something?
She picked each petal from the purple flower.
He loves me not? Seriously?
Perhaps all flowers had an even numbers of petals. She found some marigolds over near the vegetable garden to test out.
She came to the last petal.
“He loves me. I knew it.”
Marcie whirled around as she heard the door on the back porch open.
“Marcie Meredith Murray what are you doing!” Mom screamed from the porch.
Marcie looked at the ground and saw a flurry of petals around her feet.
“My flowers…” Mom dropped her eyes to the ground. “Why would you do that? Get your butt in the house right now- this is unacceptable.”
Marcie came to the house holding the stem of the marigold.
Mom’s voice was shaking with anger and her eyes were wet with tears. She pointed down the hallway, her hand trembling. “You go to your room and think about how hard I worked to make a pretty garden and now it’s all just ugly green leaves.”
Marcie walked to her bedroom in silence. She placed the marigold stem inside the biggest book she could find, closed it up and placed it on her bookshelf. All she could think about was how lucky she was that the cutest boy in class must be in love with her — it was written in this stem. It was fate. There was magic in that beautiful little stalk.
