Gladioli

The flowers sat there impassive of their surroundings, just soaking up the water in their patterned ceramic vase that was too small for all of them. The greenery shone in the bright artificial light of the shop and their white petals shone brightly as fresh flowers should. Gladioli particularly, not all the buds had flowered and the top of them were curved towards the sky , as if were competing with each other, who’ll get their first.

The volunteers to the shop would often come too close to see if they smelt nice, the odour was subtle and close enough the volunteers would see the petals sparkle where the light caught them. They loved the warmth off the lights and till next to them., in the next few days more of the buds should flower to join their brothers and sisters.
There were five of them five proud stalks all ving for attention from passing trade, volunteers and shoppers alike, one had more flowers than the rest and as such got there soon, even though they were jealous.

One at the side would be dangerously close to falling out of the vase if it wasn’t for the chocolate stand it rested on, it also had the least flowers out but it didn’t mind because it was pointed away from the stifling heat it thought of the till, the heat was too much for it, sulking generally wasn’t a gladiola’s nature but this particular stem wasn’t having any of it.
After days being in the flower shop with their friends surrounding them they felt sad, they missed their friends and yet to be singly admired was a privilege, especially when everyone said they were so pretty.

Over the days the other flowers shot out of their pods and brightened up a rather uniform space on the desk where the till and chocolate sat. The flowers started to wilt, they started going yellow at the edges and crisping up and petals were dropping onto the desk top and haphazardly getting thrown in to the bin with the recycling. After the last petal dropped they were no longer gorgeous white gladioli to brighten up any room, they were green stalks and leaves with no distinguishing features except for being green leaves to brighten a charity shop with sumptuous clothes in different clothes to do the talking instead.