by Kelly Murashige

You and I may be family, our souls like strangleweed, but you don’t really know me. I wear the same mask around you as I do around everyone else, afraid if I let you see the real me, you will rip out your own roots just to disentangle yourself from me. I am not your sister’s child; I’m just her worst mistake.

I stand in the supermarket, goose bumps rising from my skin. I imagine my unease bursting out of my body, perturbation protruding from my arms like roots.

My mother calls my name. She’s almost ready to check out. Cans of soup. Bottles of Ensure. Ginger ale for the nausea. Once we leave the market, we will make our way to you.

I turn back to the flowers. A small bouquet of daisies weeps neon colors onto the tile.

When I was young, I never understood why people send flowers when someone is sick. Perhaps I would find the gesture more poignant if my mother and I didn’t have such sensitive noses. If the poppies and baby’s breath didn’t end up in the garbage before their stems could dry. The only plants we could keep in the house were dry anthuriums.

I wonder now, as I stand alone in the market’s floral department, if you would like any of these. Maybe men want flowers too.

When I was still in high school, I read up on hanakotoba. A marriage of the Japanese words for flower and language, it’s a way to communicate with someone without speaking aloud. As someone whose grades were consistently pulled down by low scores in participation, I wished I could have used it all the time. It would be nice, I found myself thinking, if I could get away with saying nothing but shyness and truth and secret love.

My mother, ecstatic to see me showing an interest in something for once, bought my an ikebana kit with fake flowers made of silk. I made my own bouquet—in Japanese, hanataba.

“Hanabata?” is what you said, your eyebrows rising in feigned dismay.

Unlike hanakotoba, ikebana, and hanataba, hanabata is not Japanese. It’s just a pidgin word for snot.

You laughed as my face turned bright red. I could see my reflection in the mirror mounted on the far wall of the apartment.

“Shut up,” my mother said to you. “I told you she hates being teased.”

“Aw, come on,” you said, winking at me. “She knows I’m just playing around.”

I did. I knew. I didn’t mind.

I still stopped making bouquets.

Despite what my mother has always believed, it wasn’t because of you. The flowers in that ikebana kit were soft and made of silk. They were fake, in other words. I often worried I was too.

If I could make you a bouquet now, I’d tell you everything. Sunflower for love. Peonies for bravery. Primrose for desperation. No sweet peas or spider lilies when I can’t yet say goodbye.

“Come on,” my mother says to me now. “We really have to go.”

I cast another look at the flowers, then grab a lone anthurium. Its plastic sleeve crinkles with surprise.

I haven’t studied hanakotoba in years. I don’t know what an anthurium could mean. All I know is that it’s pretty. All I know is that it’s safe. All I know is that, if looked at right, it’s shaped just like a heart.

The whole drive to your place, I try to think of what to say. We climb the stairs, reach your front door. My mouth holds nothing real.

I follow my mother up the stairs, winding my fingers around the plant. The second you open the door, I thrust it out at you.

You watch me for a moment, then take the flower with both hands.

“What is this?” you ask.

“A gift,” I say. “A special hanabata.”

You blink, your lashes tangling. You then cough out a laugh. You wrap your arms around me, the anthurium still clutched in one hand. The plastic wrapper whispers, I love you even after you let go.

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Born and raised in Hawaiʻi, Kelly Murashige (she/her) is the author of the award-winning YA novel THE LOST SOULS OF BENZAITEN and Adam Silvera’s July 2025 Allstora Book Club Pick, THE YOMIGAERI TUNNEL. Her work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions.