DESERT ROSE

July 20th, 2025

My desert rose is on its third bloom cycle now. 

Two Monday mornings ago, when I pulled up the blinds, the biggest bloom was beginning to sag, just as the one next to it was on the verge of opening up.

Currently, I am staring at two flowers — which is delightful. 

I have never, and still don't consider myself to be a plant person. However, I knew for some time that I'd wanted an adenium before I saw them in person on my way out of a Trader Joe's I frequent. It wasn't ideal in any sense. 

I imagined I'd have one of the arabicum vairety (my favorite) with a huge caudex and dozens of bright pink flowers, but most importantly, I imagined that it would have the sentimental value of being gifted to me by a lover. Like with a bouquet of roses, it's what I wrote down in my journal and hoped would manifest. At that point, May had sprung into June, the man I met the month prior had vanished and with that vanishment came a lingering bitterness. I spent an entire Saturday coming to terms with it, and decided I would go after taking a walk. When I got there, the inventory was significantly reduced, and any stock they had left was outside, and none of them looked like what I had on my Pinterest board - or what was conjured up in my imagination. I picked up one with a thickened caudex (not quite the majestic arabicum, but close enough), but a very fine tip with only a few shiny green leaves flared out on top. It felt the most promising at the time and so I took it home. The following day I picked up a terracotta vase and some soil and repotted it outside the house along with my peace lily. The following day, I took it into work and secretly hoped I hadn't damaged it during the repot. 

A few weeks later, long after I made my peace with the fact that I had to gift it to myself, and enjoyed what was the first flower it ever produced - I decided I needed to take it home to repot. While transporting it home from the office, I carelessly plopped it down on the passenger's seat of my car and within an instant the very first bloom snapped clean off. I was shocked, but just as quickly as the injury occured, the plant spat out a thick clear sap to seal the site of the wound, making impossible to reattach the flower. Agitated, I placed the snapped flower in the soil and let it disintegrate in the soil that nourished it into being. That felt like all I could do at the moment. 

I spent the rest of the afternoon lamenting over what had happened, asking myself if I was really that careless, and if it was my fault that had happened. Was I responsible for crushing the beauty I labored into being? In what felt like the blink of an eye, a month's worth of effort was just..gone. 

It's been growing ever since. And now blooming regularly, and that means everything to me.

I confided in a friend that my desert rose represented the future I am desperately trying to cultivate for myself, and that no matter how tedious, I just couldn't give up on it. It's irrelevant to most of my colleagues, my sister, and even my friends, but it means so much to me. 

Amidst all of the chaos I've experienced this year. Being maligned professionally, and simply failing - it all felt like it had to mean something. Everything at that point felt like an uphill battle. Grappling with the fact that I was in fact being bullied and that I was enabling it with my silence. Coming to terms with the fact that by virtue of race, gender, nationality, and perhaps just my personality that I would never be respected or taken seriously in the setting I was in. And trying to decide how to best move forward with that understanding. 

The plant blooming briefly and snapping off (perhaps as a result of my negligence and carelessness) - it felt so personal. I took it to mean that all of the beauty I was cultivating would never mature and 'bloom' in my hands. Maybe I was deficient and undeserving. Maybe I just didn't have the right skills for it. Maybe it was just the way fate would have it - for whatever reason, I would never bloom to term. Those were all such painful possibilities to even consider, especially in such a heightened state. 

So each time my plant blooms, no matter how brief the flower lasts - it seems like a return. It feels like affirmation that my efforts aren't just vanishing into the ether leaving me depleted. Each time my desert rose blooms (or bounces back from an injury) - it serves as breathing reminder that I can, too. 

It’s not the accumulation of blooms that matters, it seems like I’m being told to enjoy the gift, and even if it falls off, more are on the way.

When all else fails, I look at it, and it is a living, growing reminder that I’m never without.

⬗⬖⬗⬖⬗

“I saw adeniums at Trader Joe’s yesterday. I’ve always wanted one, and my excuse has always been proximity. So I wrote down a secret wish. One that said if the right guy ever came along, that they would buy one for me. That it would be special that way. When I saw the adeniums yesterday my heart dropped, because I knew I’d want to buy myself one, and with that, another wish would die. I wished for so many years to hold hands on the train, I got tired of waiting, and so nowadays, I sit with a coffee in one hand, and my phone in the other. Both occupied and so it never feels like I’m missing anything until the ride stops and I toss my cup in the bin, and in my pocket goes my phone. Only then does my mind turn on itself and says “surely in this great big world someone might want to hold my hand.” But I brush past that, too.”

- Poem I wrote on 5.25.25 for a playlist, called "Adenium"

- vetiveroil