Blooming

Ask me why I breathe,

or why birds fly?

Or lions roar?

Ask not why I love.

Daphne moved through the supermarket like a woman on a mission, her trolley carving slick, wobbly paths through the dairy aisle. The wheels screeched against polished tiles, barely holding traction under fluorescent lights and piped-in 80s hits.

“Thirty minutes and I’m outta here,” she muttered.

The yogurt stacker gave her a side-eye, but she didn’t flinch. Let him think what he wanted. She pulled her cap lower over her ears, the elastic on her pink-check apron groaning under the strain of her chest, the top button already surrendering.

“Brrr.” She shivered as cold air slapped her cheeks. “This yogurt better be worth it.”

Her body begged for vetkoek and slap chips, something hot and unapologetically greasy, not this plastic-tubbed virtue.

A fridge door offered a glimpse of her reflection, warped and fogged. She liked what this particular door showed: an hourglass carved in shadow and light, the gentle slope of her belly, the proud swell of her breasts. She touched the glass, fingers gliding over the cold surface.

No one had touched her like that in years.

He used to. Before it became a ritual of bruises disguised as play. Before he pinched and twisted soft parts and left purple fingerprints like a dog marking its territory.

“This, all this gotta go,” he’d sneer, lips wet with mockery, hands kneading flesh as if it were dough to be punished.
Except for her breasts.
“Not this,” he’d say, eyes gleaming. “These stay.”
And then, pain.

Double-Ds.

Denver & Daphne.

Till death, or shame, do us part.

Thirty-five years of it.

She moved on autopilot now, loading her trolley with caffeine essentials: coffee, tea, sugar, long-life milk for her office tribe. She moved like a ghost with chores for chains, her smile tight, her mind elsewhere.

“Today is going to be a good day,” she whispered, the way someone says “I’m fine” when they’re bleeding under their clothes.

At the office park, month-end buzzed in the air. Fridays were always chaos. Month-end Fridays felt like war.

She collided with someone, one of the upper-floor girls. The kind with too-white teeth and a voice tuned like a jingle.

“TGIF! Big plans, Daph?”

Daphne clutched her oversized handbag like a shield. She had mastered the art of polite deflection.

“Not much,” she mumbled.

Which was a lie.

Because in her head, she had huge plans.

They just hadn’t happened yet.

In the kitchen, Pearl handed her a giant mug that read “ADDICT” in bold letters. Black, unsweetened, strong. Exactly how she liked her coffee. Exactly how she used to like herself.

She traced the “T” absently up and down, up and down. In her mind, it became a ladder. A way out.

Pearl winked. “Just the way you like it.”

Hot.

Yes, hot.

Daphne exhaled slowly, fogging the air around her. It was the only steam she allowed herself these days.

“Are they all in?” she asked.

“Waiting for you,” Pearl said, warmth in her voice.

Back to the grind. Daphne pushed the trolley of teapots forward, one hand steadying the slosh. She stumbled once, nearly spilling.

“Clumsy,” Denver would say, voice lined with contempt disguised as teasing.

He never saw how careful she had to be just to keep everything from tipping over.

Everything was a balancing act: the kids grown and gone, the smiles she wore like armour, the dinners still served, the birthday cards she signed with hollow hearts and reluctant kisses.

But every so often, the golden thread shimmered.

In the way Pearl looked at her with something almost like pride.

In the tenderness of her own hands as she rubbed lotion into aching thighs.

In the whisper of wind against her cheek when she stepped outside, imagining a different door, a different key, a place where she could dance barefoot across cool tiles.

There was a version of her out there, waiting.

She would wake before the sun, cradled in the arms of someone who held her like a prayer answered, his chest warm against her back, a palm resting on the curve of her hip like it was born there. The sheets still tangled from the night’s rest, her skin aglow from his touch, gentle, insistent. Her body: full, lush, alive. No longer a battleground. A garden of delight.

He stirred, pressing a kiss to the nape of her neck, murmuring into her hair.
“You taste like summer,” he whispered, voice gravelled with sleep.
She smiled into the pillow, eyes still closed. “You say that every morning.”
“Because it’s true every morning.”

No one called her clumsy here.

No one embarrassed her.

No one bruised her under the guise of love.

Here, she was her own.

And also something cherished.

She rose gently, not to escape but to begin.

Her robe, soft cotton in baby blue, slipped over her skin like water over stone. Barefaced. Silver hair brushing the nape of her neck. She didn’t rush to tame it. No need.

Outside, she stepped into worn wellies, sunflower print fading at the toes, and walked into the garden she’d built with her own hands. Her Eden.

The air was cool, thick with damp earth and rosemary. Gardenias opened toward her like white stars. Herbs: mint, thyme, sage, spilled from terracotta pots like gossiping sisters. She walked the mulched path slowly, the soft give of the ground familiar beneath her feet.

A bee dipped lazily into a lavender bloom. Dew clung to the hem of her robe. She breathed in deep, held it, let it out slowly, smiling.

This...this was what her mornings looked like now.

No fluorescent lights.

No cold fridge doors.

No slap-chip cravings drowned in shame.

No laughter that cut like glass.

Just sunlight gathering in the corners of her garden.

Just the rustle of fig leaves.

Just the warmth of her own presence.

And the whisper of love still tucked into her skin from the night before.

Somewhere behind her, far behind her, the version of herself that pushed trolleys through dreary aisles in clothes that didn’t fit, in a life that never fit—that version had become a ghost.
A kind one. A witness. But no longer the main character.
A woman in her garden, finally herself.
Knowing that love should feel like freedom,
not penance.

She was full now. Rooted. Blooming.

And marriage—if it must be—should be a ticket to the world, not the world itself.

She wasn’t there yet.

But every day, the thread shimmered brighter.

And one day soon, she would follow it all the way home.