A thread of a story that came to me on a weekend away.

If time was as relative as I would like it to be, I would see the waterlily bud before me explode open, pink to white to yellow, and then seconds later disintegrate into nothing. But as it happens, it will take a full day to open, and its inevitable demise is perhaps a week or so away. Perhaps it defies logic and spice and all things nice to wish something so short-lived an even shorter life, that the gradual process of beauty and its revelations should just be over and done with. The moments that I want to slow down are so foul, so terrifying, so painful, that if anyone read my thoughts and my wishes to manipulate time, they would call me a monster. I am a forensic memory analyst. Maybe I can find some clues. Maybe something gave it away before it happened. I was there. There must have been a reason, something I should have seen, something I should have said. Perhaps. I can’t turn back time. I can’t speed it up or slow it down. Blaming myself is as irrational as an exploding flower… but even then, when you think about it, really think about it, flowers do explode, just in slow motion.