The morning keeps some.

In the morning, a flower becomes frank. The tulips have leaned too far. The dahlias have become softer at the edges. There is water on the linen and a green smell in the room. Nothing is trying to impress anyone now.

This is the part of the story flowers are especially good at holding. Not the event, precisely, but the evidence of it: a bent stem, an empty vessel, pollen where someone set down a glass. They do not preserve the night. They prove that it happened.

At the studio, Saba unpacks the van at eight. The quince from the aisle comes out last, a few blossoms already dropped on the van floor, and she stands it in a bucket by the sink instead of the compost. Ishani has asked to keep one stem. The rest will go back to the earth by the end of the week. In the flat file under the bench, a new envelope is drying.

Keep the stem. Change the water. Let the memory lose its posture.

Editorial note: A work of editorial fiction; people, places and makers are illustrative.