The Shih Family Rose Store

"Let's open our own flower shop," said my mom. "You girls can invest, and I'll take care of it."

My sister's creative writing group sold roses to fundraise for a writing contest prize. Today they arrived in large cardboard trays, bedded as if in a coffin. Dad helped carry them in. He had to drive out to help my sister and mother because Mom had locked them out of her car outside the flower shop.

We lifted the flowers out in bunches. The stems, knocking against one another, clacked cheerfully like a miniature bamboo forest. "You just can't fake that sound," said Mom with satisfaction. I dropped one on her head. "Hitting me with roses, now, are you," she said. "That's actually poetic, in a way." She bends to pick up the fallen one, feeling its green smoothness between her fingers.

There are two plastic trashcans and one storage container of roses sitting in our closed-ceiling courtyard tonight. The petals are curling purpled, and slow. They wait tied in bunches, with the patience of reeds bent into wicker. Tomorrow they will be packaged by new hands in plastic. The day after, they will be sold.

But we won't bid them good bye. We're only the shopkeepers.