Floral, Feminine, Feline.

Plumeria weeps through the rain-damaged render. Clinging to a wall she’s called home for many seasons of growth, death, and renewal, pretty and stoic, she loves. Her sweet fragrance is a whiskey for moths yearning to drink and get drunk. The regal Sunflower on the other side of the wall cranes her neck to share gossip. They look beautiful together; white and yellow and burnished egg yolk petals, skimming touch much craved for. Beneath the lunar lux, a day’s worth of words covertly absorbed, are now exchanged. 

Lover’s lean against the weathered wall of the flower domain. His knee becomes apartheid to her thighs, as she buries her head into his shoulder, hooking her arm behind his neck. 

“My mother warned me about men like you,” the petals were antenna receiving the girl’s revelations. 

“And yet, you’re still here,” he said. The Sunflower could taste the rum in his speech. 

The Plumeria though was watching his hand travel and disappear beneath clothing, where the sun doesn’t shine. His Midas touch flushing skin, waxen beneath the lunar light.

“I...I should be going. It’s late,” she gasped the lie, ‘checking’ her watch on the hand that rested on his shoulder.

Plumeria, Sunflower, and the man groaned.

“Late you say? Well, I guess it is then.” Stepping back, he plucked his flower from the wall. “Let’s get you home, Cinderella.” 

Babu the cat prowled. Looking for food, looking for comfort, looking for a place to watch the night go by: always watching was Babu. With a majestic and silent leap, she plonked herself atop the wall. She paced back and forth, her eyes like opal, reflecting the lunar lamp, keenly looking, but not finding, and so became a furry bookend upon the wall. Nothing happens sometimes, but Babu didn’t mind. She liked this time, this void between midnight and the witching hour. She counted the stars and moon gazed, conjuring stories about life on the lunar landscape. Her mother had told her that a man-made cheese lived there, and maybe he did? One day, one night; she’d travel there and see for herself, but not tonight. Tonight, she’d dream beneath the sun with yellow petals, bathed in moonlight and fragrance.