Dangerous Flower

I met her for the first and only time last night.

I was staring out the window, watching pounding rain bruise my garden. Dark clouds consumed the sky and flowers appeared strangled in the dying light. I noticed movement in the yard, then heard a delicate knock.

When I opened the door a choking wind rushed in and shook me with its power. The girl stood before me, no older than sixteen—a desert rose, more dangerous than beautiful. Make-up spilled as she cried; her face a canvas dripped in paint. Her dress pulled tight where her belly swelled.

“I’ve come to speak to your husband,” she said.

In the morning, I discover my husband leaning on the kitchen island with his neck dipped in sorrow.

“What’s wrong?” I ask. “Are you unwell?”

“She’s gone,” he says.

“Who’s gone?”

I stir a spoon in my bitter-root tea; secrets flame in our throats. He reaches for me and his body weeps into mine. The blood-stained crests of my nails stroke his back and my heart grows grim and sinks like a coffin into its grave.

A growling gale blasts the door open, shattering its glass panes. Fragrance from my garden pierces the air. My husband lifts his sad eyes from my shoulder and looks out into the yard. The eucalyptus tree stands framed by the doorway; a riot of laughing kookaburras busy on its branches—their chorus haunted and cruel.

I walk barefoot across shards of coloured glass to where the morning’s sun seeps through. I point towards the garden.

“It seems to have grown overnight,” I say.

Vines sprout limbs that sprawl into the distant bosky dells. Strange flowers bloom, their faces splashed scarlet-red like the flushed cheeks of children.

About the author

Khalilah Okeke

Khalilah Okeke is a Nigerian, Indian, European, who was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest. She now resides in Sydney, Australia, with her husband and two children. Her work has been published in Crack the Spine, CafeLit, The Drabble, The Plum Tree Tavern, Down in the Dirt, The Red Eft Review, The Orissa Society of the Americas Journal, 50 - Word Stories, Scarlet Leaf Review and Meow Meow Pow Pow. She has upcoming work in Palooka magazine.