A Tasting Menu of Autobiographical Botanicals
art by Leah Huang
Carnations: white, red, pink—1996
*A portion of proceeds shall be donated to a concept you’ve yet to appreciate.
Shall be delivered with much bravado in plastic buckets with Easter egg dye creeping up their slit stalks, creating petals unevenly, artificially blushed. You shall receive none, which both stings and soothes.
Wildflowers: yellow, white, green—1998
Shall be wrenched from the ground and hurled in a sign of affection, wrong in a way you’ve yet to articulate. Harvested through the fence at a playground’s edge by local boys and delivered promptly to popular girls. You shall receive none, instead yearning for an organic act you could give girls that would be received kindly.
Roses: red—2002
Shall be presented with thorns removed, paired with an implication that discomforts in a way you’ve yet to name. Hopefully given by the boy you like, who everyone knows is gay, but you aren’t a girl, not really, so there’s a chance. You shall receive none, like every year, which only the new girl finds hilarious.
Berries: wild raspberry, blackberry, blueberry—2010
Shall be scrounged from bushes as an excuse to leave the house you’ve yet to escape. The home dreaded at the close of each college semester but which always reclaims you. You shall receive endless texts from boys, and your reserve of excuses and deflections will run low.
Succulent: Haworthia cooperi—2019
Shall be potted with transparent leaves visible, light reaching your wrongness that you’ve yet to evade. Cratered sex drive accompanying the start of testosterone, brewing the end of your relationship. You shall receive endless self-flagellations on why you both enthusiastically wrote sex on dead trees, but only she could transmute it to living flesh.
Gummies: wild watermelon, 10 mg THC (indica)—2022
Shall bequeath a dissociating haze that makes sex tolerable, a conclusion you’ve yet to synthesize. Altered consciousness allows the belief that sensations originate from you, earned and un-spurn-able. You shall evacuate all desire upon thinking this and wonder if it is another sign, even if you had said you wanted this, even if you believed yourself when you did.
Images: fungi medley—2024
Shall be presented with the knowledge that “the mushroom” is simply the fruiting body of some greater being that most have yet to acknowledge. Detected by those with understanding of mycorrhizal greys and existing in forms that defy clear classification, it simply is. You shall encounter the word “asexual” and find it holds new flavor, a symbiosis that grants a new understanding that had been buried all along, but only now sprouting into the world above.
