A Star Has Rose

I've got this bouquet  of flowers that I'm looking at. It was given to me by a friend (of the male persuasion, shockingly) following my performance on Friday. I mentioned them while describing my feelings in the aftermath that night. The friend in question had brought the flowers for some reason, I think. I had the vague idea that they were just to beautify the space for the show, and don't know that there was any premeditation involved.

Upon receiving the flowers, I was pressed into several photographs, the staging of which entailed a lot of directions on how you hold flowers. I never had the opportunity before that I can remember, and so it's natural that I was a little shaky on that. Maybe I was bothered by how they were dripping wet and got on my shirt. I loved getting them, but that was just the beginning of how those flowers have been an inconvenience.

I felt a real responsibility to care for the flowers, and was concerned from the start about my ability to keep them stable until I could get them home. First I stashed them in the backseat of my roommate's car. I worried then that they would drip on the interior, but there was evidently no grounds for this. Only hours after the initial reception of them did the flowers get home, whereupon I rushed to find a container where I might try to revive them with water.

I don't know that I succeeded, for the flowers look very wan indeed as I write this. It is days later though, so perhaps I might consider them to be in markedly better shape under the circumstances than might otherwise be the case. Flowers made into a bouquet are marked for a lingering death at best from the start. Before their demise is so obvious that even I see they must be thrown out though, I shall enjoy their still passable beauty and undoubtedly pleasant smell.