Love Letters in Flowers: A Gardener's Long-Distance Lament

Every few weeks I write to Sabine in Berlin. Each letter harder than the last — "I miss you" repeats until it's ritual, not revelation. Her replies mirror mine. Our correspondence won't reach Sotheby's.

Yesterday, eyeing the rose and bougainvillea I gifted her last March (clever — she can't take them), I suggested she visit before they die. One rose bloomed in three months. The bougainvillea is a thorny skeleton. They were meant to symbolize our blossoming love.

I've followed horticultural gospel: water at dawn and dusk, haul myself up at 6 AM, buy premium soil and spring water. I glare at them — I don't talk to plants. That's for people who belong in pots themselves.

Their decline haunts me. Were they omens? Three months apart at forty-something, libido intact (garlic, ginseng help). One drunk, dark night in Chiang Mai — loneliness, beauty, blur. Sabine? Who knows what she's doing. She should send a photo — I might not recognize her.

Absence distorts memory. A week together, then months of imagination. She's become ethereal — perfect, untouchable. Reality will disappoint.

We should have sent the plants to Berlin and stayed together. March: both couples in full bloom. Now I tend thorns; she's gone. My green thumb is gangrene from their thorns.

The plants belong in Berlin. Soon they'll wake at the bottom of Maenam Bay. Better they were there, and Sabine here. Both couples missing each other dearly — that much, at least, would be true.