Daffodils.
I heard the word today.
Daffodils.
And for a moment
it did not mean a flower.
It meant a room,
a season,
a version of myself
that no longer exists.
Strange,
how the world allows this.
How we lend our hearts
to songs,
streets,
restaurants,
cities,
books,
flowers—
and later discover
I had mistaken the container
for what it carried.
The daffodil was innocent.
It had never promised love.
Neither permanence.
Nor agreed to become
a monument.
It simply stood there,
yellow and indifferent,
while I wrapped it
in meanings.
Years later
the meanings changed.
The flower did not.
Perhaps that is the cruelty.
Or perhaps that is the mercy.
The world keeps returning to itself.
Only we arrive
as different people
each time we meet it.
So now,
when I hear the word
I feel two things at once.
The echo of what was.
And the quiet knowledge
that it never lived
inside the daffodil at all.
It lived in me.
And there,
for better or worse,
it still does.
-Sowmya Suryanarayana