Statesmen wore bachelor's-buttons into their deadlocks. Or maybe carnations.
Dowagers and whores—cattleyas: spilled on avid breasts and icy shoulders.
Millionaires decreed. Gardeners dug. Who looked—who saw?
Business executives had something sent up for the office, daily, and never noticed the color or knew the name. Flowers executed and embalmed to add their priceless prestige to dirty bucks.
Schoolboys planted beans and watched the halved cotyledons ascend. Then grew and prospered and spent their lives sawing women in half.
At last, tired relatives recriminated while they embedded melancholy metal pots in the green grittiness of graves.
Who cherished?
Who left them alone in the forest?
Who else—like Ricky—knew each plant to be an individual?