Three Word Prompt: When Once I Flourished

It was the smell of geraniums that called it to mind again after all these years. My kid had picked a handful for me. I got a whiff of them and the years peeled back.

I had to water the garden, and I loved the geraniums best. I sang to them, I read them books, like Wordsworth's little cottage girl. How they flourished!

Their scent was a bit pungent but always comforting. I grew with the geraniums, taller and stronger, more beautiful and confident. As I lay gazing upwards through the petals to the clouds, I fancied that I had a magical talent: that with love, I could enrich, encourage my darlings; that they would bless me back.

That lasted until my first heartbreak. Then, a life of wandering, never attaching for long. Even now, I'm alienated from that callow belief.

But for that moment, I felt that fierce pride in myself again, that hope, that conviction that I've never recovered.

And oh, oh my poor little girl! My child, never look forward. Just lie there believing.

Hold onto that feeling--for now.