SERA
“It bloomed.”
Zara said it at the garden gate on a Saturday morning in April with the quality of someone delivering news they had been waiting to deliver for a long time and had arrived at the moment with the contained excitement of someone who understood the news was larger than the volume at which it should be announced.
Sera was already at the kitchen window when Zara came through the gate with Nicole two steps behind her. She had seen it herself at six that morning during the hour that belonged entirely to her and to whatever was growing and to the quiet that made everything else possible.
The peony had opened overnight. Not tentatively. Fully. The particular extravagance of a thing that had been building toward its expression since October and had arrived at it completely. De
