"Nostalgia"

 

I felt like I was drowning in it earlier, when I was sitting on the floor of my closet, going through my box of mix tapes and bawling my eyes out. Lucky for me, my childhood came with (tiny, oat-based) life preservers.

"The Crown Prince of Flowers and His Children"

 

As they grew, the young blooms turned away from the Crown Prince, preferring instead to face the window, as if they had eyes to behold the world, and what they saw with those eyes was a painting created specially for them. "Why do you want to bother with anything out there?" the Prince of Flowers scoffed from where he sat, high on a bookcase. "Our kingdom has everything we need." The kingdom encompassed the bookcase and the table below where the children were kept and included in its service a steward quite unlike the flowers who nevertheless knew when to bring them food and water. It was a fine place.

Yet the morning came when, before the Prince had opened his sleepy petals, the steward carried the Prince's offshoots outside, bringing them to a spot just on the other side of the window. It was so the young plants could grow up tall and straight, he heard the steward say. The Prince, being a proud plant, accepted this counsel with calm and stoic silence, even though it dismayed him. He thought of bees taming their hunger with the help of the young plants' pollen and ants climbing into the young plants' pots to make their tunnels among the roots. The Crown Prince of Flowers only wished to protect his children from the world outside, even if--and this he knew was true--that world was better with them as part of it.

"General Purpose"

 

I asked the clerk at the office supply store if she had anything stronger than the general purpose sealing tape that I could use. I held out my hands and showed her my heart, its broken pieces lying wet in my palms like shards of glass I'd collected from a polluted sea.

The clerk told me no, that was all they carried. She also informed me that my heart would probably break more if I tried to do anything else with it. She asked if I wanted some bubble wrap.

I told her that it didn't matter, it wasn't much use to anyone in that condition anyway, and besides, I only wanted the stronger tape to make sure that the box would stay shut.

I didn't even label the box before I put it away.