“About us – we at midnight, slaves,
Chained to a tottering world”*
“Look at them.” Titus** stretches his lithe trunk over frilled bracts to stare smugly at the crowd below. He watches as they crane their necks toward him. Nostrils flare, bodies spasm and heave as they gag on his glorious perfume. “Lemmings! What do they expect? It’ll be different for them. No human can manage it – rotting flesh – heard someone call me an apex plant. Sounds about right -no one will be plucking my petals anytime soon!”
Lily** chuckles, her slender neck swivels towards the globes suspended overhead, her face satin and soft, her lash-like stamen heavy with rust-brown pollen. She knows they have come to see him: the star attraction, and her the backdrop to his brilliance.
But he will be gone soon, and she will go on. Her talents will multiply where he will whither and die. She watches as the passing parade shuffles out, gratefully accepting water and tissues from the attendant.
The lights flicker off and she watches as Mars twinkles in the gloaming.
“How can you stand it?” he asks.
“What?”
“Still being here. Don’t you get bored? The same thing day in day out. The people!”
“Oh, it’s not the same, and I’m not the same.”
“What? I’m only here for forty-eight hours and it’s just hour after hour. Smile for the camera, give us a whiff, tick. Anyway, you look the same to me the whole time I’ve been here.”
“Guess that’s cause you’re not looking.” She bends her face towards him, his golden body silhouetted against eerie purple. He leans toward her and she sees the moon rise. Its soft light renders her white gown transparent. She shivers as her delicate lashes slip from their place, rest on a soft curve, then drift to the ground. He droops further still and she chuckles. “You coming for a closer look?”
“Ha, Ha.” He grunts and then topples flaccid against a magenta curtain.
“Well, I guess that’s it, then. We can turn the camera off.” Coarse trousered legs swish past her tearing away the silk of her gown. She is naked but no one notices, the thin green of her stem stands tall iridescent against the black of midnight.
Tomorrow, she will redress in creamy silk, attempting perfection each day, till Autumn beckons and she tires, her energy spent. It will be her turn then, to topple and fall, to be covered and forgotten.
*This piece is a response to Thea Astley’s poem “Poem [1]” Astley, T (2017). Selected Poems. University of Queensland Press.
Photo by Gabrielle Hensch on Unsplash
** Titus is a corpse flower (Titan arum) and Lily is a day lily (Hemerocallis). Corpse flowers last 48 hours and bloom rarely. Lilies last 24 hours, with multiple blooms, and are perennial bulbs.
