It was absurd – to argue with something that photosynthesized my guilt – but the absurdity thrilled me. Maybe that’s what queerness is, I thought: the pleasure of breaking form, of wanting in directions that defy taxonomy.
It was absurd – to argue with something that photosynthesized my guilt – but the absurdity thrilled me. Maybe that’s what queerness is, I thought: the pleasure of breaking form, of wanting in directions that defy taxonomy.
Achingly beautiful language, and a complex, poignant allegory are the beating heart of Timothy Ngome’s short story, Where the Petals Remember My Name. It starts with our narrator finding evidence of themself in the petals of an orchid, and its roots begin to grow within the intimate soil of their life. Soon enough, they discover that they are, indeed, more plant than person — a living thing that is growing and feeding on the world, and their exterior, though scorned by others, is pure beauty, with veins pumping full of life.
The mundane everyday is haunted by something ancient in this story. Ngome’s writing convinces the reader that roots are taking hold in their own veins, and gives the orchid a voice whose breath we can feel whispering in our own ears. The writing, and the pervasive imagery that fills it, are the petals that grow along the stem of this story. At the roots, there is a narrator, still tenderly growing into their own queer identity, and living with the weight of what others say: their doubts, judgements, and their violence. We see someone who wonders if the person they’re really deceiving is, in fact, themselves – until the orchid tells them otherwise.
It started telling me stories: about jungles where orchids grew on the bones of forgotten gods, about lovers who whispered their names into the soil to be reborn as flowers. It told me I had once been one of them, a blossom that refused to die when plucked.
I almost believed it.
There’s something feral beneath the story, beneath the words, something that returns to the archaic and questions our definition of human bodies, gender and belonging. This story shows us that, sometimes, we have to find the ancient beings that lurk within ourselves in order to understand how we exist in the world today.
There is a level of toxicity in the way the orchid commands and the narrator obeys, but this speaks to the way we all exist at some time or another in toxic proximity to our own pain, especially when our identities are questioned, invalidated, and loathed. What we see here is our narrator existing with that pain: living with a new house guest, one who permeates every aspect of their life, who the narrator has no choice but to bond with, learn from, and absorb. This is a representation of the long, complicated, and fraught journey of so many queer people digging through their soul and discovering how to exist as themselves.
This story carries the evidence of life beneath its fingernails and the scent of discovery on its breath. In it, there’s proof we cannot discover ourselves without first embracing our own transformation. There are orchids taking root in our chests, and if you learn their language you’ll discover a truth that no one in this world can take away: there is no need to be what others expect or label you to be. You are infinite, you are intangible. You are desire, love, light, beauty. You are human.
Tatianna Kalb, Co-Editor-in-Chief
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