An Unfurling Fist

“What is a blossom anyway but a fist saying I can’t do this anymore.”
— Joseph Fasano

Earlier this month, I was in my brother’s kitchen. He had just served me the most incredible sourdough pizza I’ve ever had. I don’t know how or why it came up—maybe there were flowers on the counter—but I quoted the line that opens this post.

“Is that a poem or something?” he asked. “I don’t get it.”

So I demonstrated with my hand: a fist, slowly opening. A blossom. The metaphor made perfect sense to me. He wasn’t (very) impressed. I love poetry; he loves spreadsheets. I can’t speak for him, but I can say with certainty that he has enriched my life and taught me much.

I discovered Fasano’s poem a while back on Instagram, and now I can hardly look at flowers without thinking of it—an unfurled fist. Hmm.

I’ve been a little on the struggle bus lately. On the small end of things: my garage studio is too cold to paint in. On the much larger, harder-to-digest end: the broader state of world affairs, which lately feels like hope itself is under relentless attack. Small potatoes and impossibly large ones.

So I’m over here painting flowers. Their shapes don’t have to be exact to feel right. And the thought that maybe the studio will warm enough for me to feel my fingers again—and that some fisted hearts might unfurl—feels like my own tiny expression of hope.

We give flowers in times of great joy and also in moments of great suffering. They don’t really do anything to change either situation, but perhaps they mark the occasion. And these—arranged in a little black-and-white vase—are my hope that we might see beyond the binaries that divide us. That our fists might unfurl, not in resignation or surrender, but in growth. In freedom.