The Daily Life of a Self-Discovering Dandelion
Author's note: I felt like I had to write something to counter-act the previous post.
You don’t know what it feels like to be unappreciated unless you’re a dandelion. Not like the dandelions with seeds that people make wishes upon, but like the boring flowers with thin yellow pedals sticking outwards and jagged leaves like arrows.
It’s not like I’m a rare and beautiful flower like a chrysanthemum or a wild berry bush that lost travellers can sustain themselves off of. I’m not, not beautiful, I’m a dandelion in a field of dandelions. A single one of us alone is a splash of colour in an otherwise green landscape, and a field of us together makes for a hopeful summer day, but a single flower in a field of flowers the same as itself is insignificant.
It makes me claustrophobic, constantly being crowded by others that are just like me. Even having a bee land on me and pollinate is like being chosen to participate in a magic show. Too bad I’m eternally stuck in the back seat.
It happened to me once and the bee’s furry exterior and foreign eyes were the only things different in a world that was all the same. It was different than when I saw it happen to some of the flowers around me. When it came towards me I thought for sure it would fly right past like they always have, but it descended upon me, coming closer and its features becoming more defined.
The first thing I felt was the warmth, not like that of a sun 150 million kilometres away, but like something present, like blanket enveloping me, like my first well-deserved hug. The next was its feet, a prickling pressure that pushed into my exterior but never cracked the surface. Its weight gave me a whole new meaning to gravity, and it’s gentle mouth tickled my petals. When if flew away too quickly, I wanted to fly with it, and I felt that if I wasn’t tied to the ground by my stem I could have.
A couple walked through the field. I could tell they were a couple by the way they were holding each other's hands like they were scared of letting go, and by the shy looks of new exhilarating love that they gave each other. They sat near the edge of the field, near me.
They spoke in a soft tone, that I think must have meant they were sharing private, beautiful secrets. Laughter rang through the field and there was no one there to hear the enchanting sound but for me and some other objects, known as inanimate.
Suddenly, as if by magic, I rose. It didn’t feel like I was being ripped out of the ground, but that’s what was happening. I rose higher, and saw more than I ever had before, and I felt a warm breeze that the other flowers had always blocked from me. It felt exactly as I thought it would when I wished to fly after that bee, except I was still being held down, by one of the people’s fingers.
The person held me with his textured forefinger and thumb and used his other hand to brush curly brown locks behind the girl’s ear. He placed me there in her hair and it was nothing like sitting day after day in the grass. Her hair was a shimmering brown, softer than any bee, and smelt like a far away place I would never have the chance to go.
Her sing-song laughter travelled again through the field, and she threw her head back, jostling me from my place in her hair. I fell back into the grass, discarded. I thought they would forget about me, or maybe choose another flower to be a hair accessory, but the boy picked me right back up into the air and placed me back where I had just been.
I guess as far as flowers go, being a dandelion in a young girl’s hair really isn’t that bad.