One Man’s Weed

He’d been unable to afford even a single rose, so when he offered me a flower upon meeting for our first date, it was a dandelion he’d found growing wild on an embankment nearby.

Even as our lives slowly got more comfortable, it was still our flower. Every anniversary, every birthday, every so often, I’d get yellow dandelions, in larger and more extravagant arrangements, sure, but still the same simple flower, when it came down to it.

But none of them meant as much as that very first one.

Or the very last one he brought me in the hospital.