Page 35 of Poetry of Flowers

Dark blue for my favorite color.

Purple because blue and red made purple.

My door quietly opened and Mommy looked around my big room until she found me sitting in my creative corner.

“Oh baby, what are you doing already awake?” she whispered, closing the door behind her as she walked over to me.

My Mommy is so pretty, we have the same green eyes.

It made me so happy that me and my siblings all had her eye color.

Mommy was still in her pajamas when she sat down on the other chair across from me.

It looked so funny, her tall body on the little chair. The chairs were not for grown-ups, silly her.

“I’m making Tillie a friendship bracelet, so she knows I’m better than stupid Autumn.” I told her proudly and took the big scissors to cut off the strings. I got the scissors from the kitchen because my school scissors were so blunt, they couldn’t even cut hair, how could they cut wool?

“Let me do it, baby.” Mommy took the strings and scissors out of my hand and cut the pieces for me. She’s so nice.

“We don’t say stupid in this house, Kayden. Autumn is Tillie’s cousin, they are family.”

I rolled my eyes, she always said we had to be nice, but when she drove us to school, she yelled at the other cars, words I couldn’t even say. Mommy said they were illegal, and you’d g to prison for saying them. My mommy was basically a criminal.

“But she takes Tillie away from me, and I don’t like that, she’s mine.” We promised each other to always play together, but she was breaking our promise.

Mommy let out a quiet laugh, “Oh sweetheart, Tillie is her own person, she will have friends beside you someday, but that doesn’t mean she will stop loving you.”

She took the three cut strings and started to braid them, “Like this, the little red rabbit jumps over the purple rabbit and rests between blue and purple. Now the blue rabbit wants to lay down between red and purple, all of them jump over another because the middle is the safest part to take a nap.” She smiled as she braided.

“I understand, I like sleeping in the middle too.” Mommy gives me the unfinished braid and I continued.

Red hop!

Blue hop!

Purple hop!

It wasn’t as hard as I thought, it’s easy!

Now I could braid Tillie’s hair too, but it’s all light brown and that will be confusing.

“Do you think Tillie loves me?”

Mommy nodded fast, her blond curls hopping up and down like the rabbits in my imagination when I braided.

“Of course, she loves you, Kayden.”

“How do you know; did she tell you?”

Now she shook her head. “No, but she looks at you with little hearts in her eyes. You mean a lot to the sweet girl,” she explained. Hearts in her eyes? I never saw hearts in anyone’s eyes. Is that what Nash tried to explain to me? What was it called, metapi— metabo— metaphor!

Yes, that’s what he explained to me.

“Why doesn’t Daddy look at me with hearts in his eyes?” I blurted out.

Mommy gave me a sad smile. I knew that one. She gave it to me too when Grandpa Miles died.

“That’s a different kind of love.”

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