“My house burned downBut anyway, it was afterThe flower petals had already fallen”

“The heavy smell of flower petals stroked the walls of my lungs.”

“We say that flowers return every spring, but that is a lie. It is true that the world is renewed. It is also true that that renewal comes at a price, for even if the flower grows from an ancient vine, the flowers of spring are themselves new to the world, untried and untested. The flower that wilted last year is gone. Petals once fallen are fallen forever. Flowers do not return in the spring, rather they are replaced. It is in this difference between returned and replaced that the price of renewal is paid. And as it is for spring flowers, so it is for us.”

“Yes,” I said, looking back up as the sun settled into the sky, the red blooming from it like flower petals. “It has already begun.”

“I had a dream my house was on fire, and I tried to rescue all the cats—and none of the politicians. You can burn my house, but don’t you dare burn my coffee.”

“You are a cosmic flower. Om chanting is the process of opening the psychic petals of that flower.”