Peony Season in America

Beauty at a time like this.

It’s warm and dreary here in Columbus. The forecast calls for storms on and off throughout the day. Usually, I find this weather so defeating, but… sometimes, and this week is certainly one of those times, it’s nice when the outside matches the inside. One less lie for us to have to choke down.

After having breakfast with a friend, I spotted these magenta peonies in a neighbor’s front yard and stopped to take a picture. Jewels of water on the leaves and blossoms made the flowers seem all the more bright.

Peonies are my favorite flower. Since moving to Ohio a few years ago, I’ve come to look forward to this time of year—a brief window of a few weeks, actually—when I can find the lush heads of peony flowers bowing in gardens and yards all over the city. It’s a gloriously short-lived season. The flowers always seem to be exhausted by their own opulence, ready to leave us right as they arrive.

I worship their extravagant brevity.

Sometimes, I wish I didn’t so easily see death, bright as sunshine, burning at their centers, reaching out to us to be touched, to be known, but I do. I see the end of the world unfurling in the petals of every peony flower I pass.

It would be enough for all of us to make it home tonight. A miracle even.