Cindy Milstein (they) on Nostr: I’ve been talking to flowers this spring. Or more precisely, I’ve been listening ...

I’ve been talking to flowers this spring.

Or more precisely, I’ve been listening to them—their petal-soft voices emitting a wordless language to which I have no need to speak aloud in return. Somehow they make more sense than humans, or at least those humans who think springtime is for fascism and genocide.

The flowers whisper and rage and sometimes shout in their colorful language that they grew and now struggle against the elements in order to not merely survive but instead fight to thrive, each one a life-giving rebel of sorts. They offer a brilliant and audacious display that life persists. Even after their blooms whither, leaves drop, and stems fall to the earth into the warm embrace of an ecosystem that will bury them with honor, already recognizing them as ancestors and future and promise.

Not hope, but promise. Sometimes not even promise, but the barest cycle of life that refuses to give up as long as spring flowers, or the dream of them, are possible.

(photos of tulips in Michigan and Montreal, May 2025)