They say every girl begins as a flower. Some open gently to the morning, soft with rain and innocent of winter. Some grow wild beside forgotten roads, their petals torn by passing storms, yet still they turn toward the sun. And some— some wait for night. They grow in hollow places where the earth is warm with buried things, where roots twist through old bones and drink what grief has left behind. Those flowers do not die. They change. Their petals grow pale beneath the moon. Their perfume thickens in the dark. Their thorns turn inward first— then outward. And when the night is deep enough, when even the birds have forgotten to sing, the flower opens and a witch steps out. Beautiful. Barefoot. Still carrying the scent of the grave. I found one beneath a dying moon. She stood alone in a field where nothing else would grow. Her petals were white. Her roots were black. I should have known. But poison rarely announces itself. Sometimes it smells like sweetness. Sometimes it looks like innocence. Sometimes it reaches for your hand. I breathed her in. That was all. One breath. One touch. One foolish moment spent believing beauty could not burn. By morning there was a red mark on my wrist. By evening it had climbed to my shoulder. By midnight I could feel roots moving beneath my skin. She smiled when I told her. Not cruelly. That would have been easier. She smiled the way flowers do— without guilt. Without mercy. As though destruction were only another kind of blooming. I tried to cut her from me. But every wound grew vines. I tried to burn her memory. But the smoke smelled of her perfume. I tried to run toward daylight. Yet wherever my shadow fell, small black flowers opened. Now I understand. The witch was never only the woman. She was the seed. The touch. The fever. The beautiful sickness I carried home inside me. And tonight, as the sun bleeds out and the shadows begin to creep, I feel something opening behind my ribs. Slowly. Softly. Petal by petal. Perhaps every girl begins as a flower. But witches— witches are what flowers become when they learn that darkness can feed them too.
