The Red Flower
Anna Engstrom
It started with a red flower.
I saw the red flower spreading on my long sleeve, blossoming from a dark hole where shrapnel tore cloth and flesh and shattered bone. I saw the red flower and knew it meant goodbye.
The dust filling my nose and coating my skin, the rumble and tumble of the street turning into rubble, the flash brighter than day and the boom of the bombs tearing our lives apart all disappeared at the sight of the red flower growing ever larger to the throbbing pulse of pain.
Mama, holding close my baby brother, screamed when she saw the flower.
When all was still but wails of death and grief around us, Mama took me to the place where I knew I had to go. That is where the red flower took people, so we went.
We went, and we waited.
“Not enough supplies,” Mama told me. “Not enough help. We will wait.”
I didn’t know why we waited, I only knew it hurt.
After the sun rose and set and rose and set and rose again, my turn came. In the hot sun, the red flower had turned black and green. Mama couldn’t say anything when I showed her.
“Don’t worry,” they told me, their surgeon’s masks alien and cold. “You won’t feel a thing.”
“Don’t worry,” Mama said, who’d been with me when the flower bloomed. “I’ll be right here.”
It didn’t help.
Singing, screaming, the hole gaped at me as I lay down on the flimsy operating table. “Goodbye,” it yelled, its voice heard in a thousand shards of pain leaping through my nerves.
“Goodbye,” I answered, steeling myself, taking one last look at that right arm in the dirty shirt. It was strong. They took the shirt off, cut off the sleeve, so I could see each muscle, tight beneath the always-tan skin. It was a good arm. But now it was broken, rotten. Houses can be built again, but arms and lives are gone for good.
“Goodbye,” I told the hand, that hand with its skilled fingers that would never learn to put a thousand words on paper with a few deft touches, that wouldn’t again curl tight around my mother’s as she led me through the market, that wouldn’t throw and catch and wave hello.
“Is anesthesia like amnesia?” I said, scared of the alien men.
“No,” they said.
In, out, in, breathe deep, go to sleep.
“Goodbye,” I told the fading dreams–the farmer I could have been, guiding an animal or machine in straight furrows. The builder, using hammer and nail to make something where there had been nothing at all. The craftsman, joining blocks of polished wood or carefully embroidering something beautiful to sell. The world faded and took the dreams with it.
“Goodbye,” I said, seeing their scalpels and knives and saws and then nothing, as the red flower bloomed again.
Saws have teeth. They gnaw and chew on bones like dogs, but smarter, straighter, skillful, in lines that sever and remove.
Time–seconds, minutes, hours–passed, and the world was opening once more. I saw but didn’t see and fought the light, didn’t want to wake, but couldn’t help it, for there was fire in my body, burning, concentrated on a fiery stump.
Mama was there, with tears in her eyes that she thought I wouldn’t see.
Three days I lay on a cot, covered in a blanket that was bleached almost white to try to remove the dark, flowered mark that spread on it. I wondered if the boy who’d used that blanket before me had lived or died. The fire burned on and on, but soon it eased, I could bear it. Only then did I look. Only then could I look.
White bandages, changed each day, covered it. They were clean, they were cool, like water to the fire, but they itched as if they’d wrapped a nest of ants beneath it. I didn’t reach across to touch them. I didn’t dare.
Then one day they unwrapped it and put no more bandages on. “It is well,” they told me. “You will live. You can go now.”
It wasn’t well. I wasn’t whole, though I was alive.
I was sitting, then standing. My feet hit the dusty floor, and Mama was there. She took my arm–no. There wasn’t one to take. She put her arm around my shoulder–no. It was still raw, tender to the touch. She guided me by my waist, steadied me, held me tight, and we walked out of that room where it was quiet but the echoes of screams lived.
Home wasn’t home, it was broken but still liveable. Like my body.
Papa saw me and said, “You are brave.”
My sister saw me and said, “My poor little Khalil!”
I wasn’t brave, and pity wouldn’t change anything.
My friends saw me and came close, looking at the stump where it had been, asking if it hurt, if I’d been awake, if I saw how the men with the alien masks did it. Then they left, and they didn’t ask me to play with them. They knew I couldn’t, and didn’t want to see my shame.
I stayed inside with my sister, watched my baby brother. Mama said, “Your life is not over because of this. Do not act like it is.”
So I went with her to the market, but couldn’t balance the heavy basket. She carried it instead.
When screams erupted and bombs began to fall again, as we walked down the street toward home, I didn’t run. I walked on like the bombs were a winter drizzle. I knew better than to run. If I ran or walked, if I hid or stood still, I knew that they would find me all the same. If they wanted, they could break me, break my home, break my family. So I walked home through the bombs, waiting for the red flower to bloom again.
~ ~ ~
May 2026
Anna Engstrom
It started with a red flower.
I saw the red flower spreading on my long sleeve, blossoming from a dark hole where shrapnel tore cloth and flesh and shattered bone. I saw the red flower and knew it meant goodbye.
The dust filling my nose and coating my skin, the rumble and tumble of the street turning into rubble, the flash brighter than day and the boom of the bombs tearing our lives apart all disappeared at the sight of the red flower growing ever larger to the throbbing pulse of pain.
Mama, holding close my baby brother, screamed when she saw the flower.
When all was still but wails of death and grief around us, Mama took me to the place where I knew I had to go. That is where the red flower took people, so we went.
We went, and we waited.
“Not enough supplies,” Mama told me. “Not enough help. We will wait.”
I didn’t know why we waited, I only knew it hurt.
After the sun rose and set and rose and set and rose again, my turn came. In the hot sun, the red flower had turned black and green. Mama couldn’t say anything when I showed her.
“Don’t worry,” they told me, their surgeon’s masks alien and cold. “You won’t feel a thing.”
“Don’t worry,” Mama said, who’d been with me when the flower bloomed. “I’ll be right here.”
It didn’t help.
Singing, screaming, the hole gaped at me as I lay down on the flimsy operating table. “Goodbye,” it yelled, its voice heard in a thousand shards of pain leaping through my nerves.
“Goodbye,” I answered, steeling myself, taking one last look at that right arm in the dirty shirt. It was strong. They took the shirt off, cut off the sleeve, so I could see each muscle, tight beneath the always-tan skin. It was a good arm. But now it was broken, rotten. Houses can be built again, but arms and lives are gone for good.
“Goodbye,” I told the hand, that hand with its skilled fingers that would never learn to put a thousand words on paper with a few deft touches, that wouldn’t again curl tight around my mother’s as she led me through the market, that wouldn’t throw and catch and wave hello.
“Is anesthesia like amnesia?” I said, scared of the alien men.
“No,” they said.
In, out, in, breathe deep, go to sleep.
“Goodbye,” I told the fading dreams–the farmer I could have been, guiding an animal or machine in straight furrows. The builder, using hammer and nail to make something where there had been nothing at all. The craftsman, joining blocks of polished wood or carefully embroidering something beautiful to sell. The world faded and took the dreams with it.
“Goodbye,” I said, seeing their scalpels and knives and saws and then nothing, as the red flower bloomed again.
Saws have teeth. They gnaw and chew on bones like dogs, but smarter, straighter, skillful, in lines that sever and remove.
Time–seconds, minutes, hours–passed, and the world was opening once more. I saw but didn’t see and fought the light, didn’t want to wake, but couldn’t help it, for there was fire in my body, burning, concentrated on a fiery stump.
Mama was there, with tears in her eyes that she thought I wouldn’t see.
Three days I lay on a cot, covered in a blanket that was bleached almost white to try to remove the dark, flowered mark that spread on it. I wondered if the boy who’d used that blanket before me had lived or died. The fire burned on and on, but soon it eased, I could bear it. Only then did I look. Only then could I look.
White bandages, changed each day, covered it. They were clean, they were cool, like water to the fire, but they itched as if they’d wrapped a nest of ants beneath it. I didn’t reach across to touch them. I didn’t dare.
Then one day they unwrapped it and put no more bandages on. “It is well,” they told me. “You will live. You can go now.”
It wasn’t well. I wasn’t whole, though I was alive.
I was sitting, then standing. My feet hit the dusty floor, and Mama was there. She took my arm–no. There wasn’t one to take. She put her arm around my shoulder–no. It was still raw, tender to the touch. She guided me by my waist, steadied me, held me tight, and we walked out of that room where it was quiet but the echoes of screams lived.
Home wasn’t home, it was broken but still liveable. Like my body.
Papa saw me and said, “You are brave.”
My sister saw me and said, “My poor little Khalil!”
I wasn’t brave, and pity wouldn’t change anything.
My friends saw me and came close, looking at the stump where it had been, asking if it hurt, if I’d been awake, if I saw how the men with the alien masks did it. Then they left, and they didn’t ask me to play with them. They knew I couldn’t, and didn’t want to see my shame.
I stayed inside with my sister, watched my baby brother. Mama said, “Your life is not over because of this. Do not act like it is.”
So I went with her to the market, but couldn’t balance the heavy basket. She carried it instead.
When screams erupted and bombs began to fall again, as we walked down the street toward home, I didn’t run. I walked on like the bombs were a winter drizzle. I knew better than to run. If I ran or walked, if I hid or stood still, I knew that they would find me all the same. If they wanted, they could break me, break my home, break my family. So I walked home through the bombs, waiting for the red flower to bloom again.
~ ~ ~
May 2026
