Flowers were always there for me. I recall days spent in nature admiring the flora, never plucking, always pushing my nose up against the stems and inhaling. Eyes closed, it was euphoric. Leaving them was tantamount to torture. They’d be here again, though, the next day. Unless somebody plucked them or a particularly hard wind or frost came through. I missed them when I was home, surrounded with bottled roses and orchids, peonies and carnations. But the ones in nature were different: fragrant, fresh, untouched. Nobody related to me on this.

Opening Floral Sense was the second best day of my life. The first best day of my life was the first time I remember taking my own bouquet of flowers home, purchased with my own money, for myself. The perfume boutique was a labor of love, as most businesses are, but after a few months of advertising, sleepless nights, and communing with the flowers on next steps, the shop became successful. A staple gem in the east of our town, with daily sales and specials galore.

What made Floral Sense different was that I handcrafted each perfume from flowers I had discovered around town. Never picking them, remember. I took their smell home and with memory crafted something similar, strikingly similar, as one critic said, into a little glass vial and water. Each time a customer sprayed my product, they were entering nature again. Nature in the city was hard to find.

This was all before, of course, I lost my sense of smell. The first worst day of my life. The second worst day of my life was when Floral Sense was purchased by what I suspect might be a corporate conglomerate. I woke up on Easter Sunday and rushed to my garden to spend some time with the flowers. I smelled nothing. I inhaled deeply, shrugging, looking frantically around, but there was no smell for me to have. It was a punishment, I believe, for passion. I rang my hands and thought of next steps - and knew that this was the first step of the punishment. The next steps, I had to do myself.

They took me to the emergency room and subsequently the sanatorium, eye sockets, tongue, ears, and fingers all bleeding. I had no senses left to give.