Sitting at the table, trying to hide, unnoticed, behind the centrepiece, got me to thinking about the language of flowers. Held up as a silent dialogue in the Victorian era, if you gave someone flowers with your right hand it was ‘yes’, but if the left was proffered, then ‘no’.

If you gave a bouquet that was wilted, then the message was probably obvious. The flowers before me were starting to wilt, the day had been too hot, they had sat there, under the marquee, still, silent – waiting?

As the glasses clinked, the laughter flew, the music trebled, the satin shuffled, but the flowers stayed in repose, not commenting, not judging, not enjoying (as was clear by their now ungainly wilting), the weight of the day was clearly too much.

So, I said it to him, ‘The feathers in my brain, they fog everything up and I can’t think straight.’ He looked at me with that quizzical, yet slightly amused look, he often managed to appear sad and happy at the same time. ‘You don’t always have to figure it out, Bea’, he replied.

And yet I do, and he knew that I did.

She’d picked lavender roses, which meant ‘love at first sight’. But did she know? Their barely there, dusky orchid colour and silky, ebbing folds, matched the colour of the bridesmaids’ dresses, classical and neat, each one sheathed within an inch of their forms.

The bride and groom appeared the picture of newly wed joy, but we all know that it is short-lived, encapsulated like a painting, hung on the wall and forgotten. A day forsaken. Everything gets forsaken and forgotten, especially me.

I would’ve picked windflowers, a vibrant red – you may know them as anemone, said to have been created by Aphrodite as she poured nectar on the blood of her dead Adonis.

Matisse’s painting, _Robe violette et Anémones, _has a heady mix of red and violet along with an alarming clash of orange. Each time I’d look at it, I’d feel like throwing up.

Today made me feel like that painting, trapped in its flat areas, imprisoned by its black lines, encased in the patterns, like a doll wrapped too tightly in a blanket by an overzealous child.

‘Let go’, I thought. Don’t hold on, or let it hold you, just let it go.