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Another set of packed bags. After another get out now. This time my mother, sister, and I landed in a trailer across the abandoned tracks. Fake wood paneling on the walls repelled all light, and years of cigarette smoke made every surface feel singed.
Outside the air was less pungent, but the trailer’s siding was buckling and rusted. Following the chain link fence around the small patch of yard, we fanned out around the telephone pole. In the very center, it rose high, stretching away from the place, although still undeniably stuck.
My mother took a ride, as she did when she needed a reminder that there was something else out there. The ride delivered. Wild daylilies by the side of the road—thigh-high stalks above the field, blooming throats of orange intent on swallowing the sky. My mother dug.
The lilies took to their new spot around the pole, transforming that massive log, as if it had appeared out of the earth just to be among the flowers. These transplants that had grown where no one in particular had wanted them refused to be overshadowed.
We sat outside in battered lawn chairs most mornings, watching bees flutter among the blossoms and birds dart between the stems. Each flower bloomed for only one day, newly fallen petals adding to the flame-like carpet below.
“Do you think they’ll bloom again next year?” I asked.
No one said anything. We all knew they would.
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