by Ayesha Siddiqui

A night blooming Peruvian cactus lived steps outside my door this past summer. On it was a single bud waiting to open. Last month, late one night, it finally bloomed. I thought about waiting until the next day to see it, tired from the day that passed, but curiosity finally won and I stepped outside. The creamy white flower was a stark contrast to the blackened sky, the petals lush and like a kaleidoscope, never ending. I took a few photos and went back into my home. The next night, I returned to look at the flower again, but it had withered, drooping over on itself, for the flowers only bloom for a single night, serving as pollination for bats, then immediately die, offering seeds to the birds.

Life is full of seasons, of phases, of things that flower, then disappear. Death of old selves. Death of old lives. Death of dreams. Ready or not, life releases, the only way the new can appear. This intensity exists all around us. The grapevines in the backyard wither too soon, before we can enjoy all the grapes the season offered. The hummingbirds start to leave the honeysuckle earlier and earlier as autumn approaches, long before we are ready for the shorter days. When it happens, we are often wholly unprepared. We leave the flower, assuming it will be there the next night, only to return and find that we are forced into the new. Change arrives whether we welcome it or not. 

For what feels like a painfully long time now, my own writing has been shifting and changing and morphing, slow and directionless. Family drama, realism, surrealism, sci-fi, absurdism, climate crisis focused, what haven’t I written at this point? Sometimes you wonder why you create something that might only be performed once, if at all.

The only consistency in life, it seems, is death of the big and small. Death of who you thought you were, of who you actually were, of who you hoped to be as the new is ushered in. The night is thin, beckoning you to witness the flower that sorrowfully lives for only a night. We’ll attempt to capture it with words that are marvelous and sad, intense and happy, joyful and ready. We make plays that are ephemeral, alive sometimes for only a night, the creation existing for those who dared to come outside into the night and see. 

The Peruvian night blooming cactus does not weep if no one witnesses the single night of its magnificent creation. The flower appears regardless. May that be a reminder to me.