“We are going to be the Chipotle of flowers.”
– Production Manager, BloomThat, San Francisco, 2015
A lack of air.
A gathering of thorns,
a limpness, a distance to close,
a bent outlier unwilling
to lean or bounce toward
a more vacant center.
*
By the second week
the bouquets are delivered pre-made.
A pallet of tall boxes arrives
at the square door
and the truck drives away.
We walk over with clippers.
We snip each white plastic strip
to release them from each other.
Often, two of us lean in
to cut the same one.
*
We break down the stack,
lowering six from the top
then dispersing the base.
We pull black plastic buckets
out of the boxes
and dump the water from each
into larger, sturdier buckets.
We then pour this down
a slope of concrete
and the dark splash dries.
I often volunteer for this part,
as it enables me
to leave the group
for a minute or two,
to look into my phone
with my computer in mind.
*
Before each arrangement's inspection
we must remove a cone of clear wrap
and dispose of it.
This thin stuff won't crunch
flat or into a ball.
It immediately reopens
and will often skid
down the side of the trash can,
sparking with static
rather than falling fully into it.
It will hover near the top,
one of its edges
caught by the rim,
until something solid
like a handful of stems
or the dropped head of a rose
pushes it down.
*
We pick off brown petals we spot
and toss them into large, green
compostable bags
secured to trash bins
by giant rubber bands.
The bags are branded
with rippling logos.
They feel like flesh.
I have one glove to feel them.
This removal becomes so addictive
the roses grow narrow.
At the end of the line,
once they're wrapped and tied,
the pointed red roses
are hard and tight.
*
The stripping the thorns,
the gripping the wet
garden gray gloves,
the forcing them down
sturdy thick stems,
the shaking off
wet wasted leaves
into the bin.
The reaching for pale
plastic from each
deep white container.
Thorns in the skin
at the edge of the nail.
The sweeping up clippings
and squeezing cold foam.
The cold folding the foam,
the dipping the mass
into a cup then a bag
from a stack.
*
I was told on the first day
standing among
a herd of young women
I had met moments before
I could rise, if I worked
hard on the flowers
to be “the cream at the top.”
This was said not directly to me
but to all of us
gathered loosely around
a clean, silver table.
Someone on staff
could be swiftly promoted
like Leigh, our Manager,
said the Head of Production,
Sarah, the wife of one owner.
That person would make
fifty cents more per hour
and she would have
twice the responsibility.
*
I keep shifting the stems around
until they face forward
and lay flat.
The thorns and knobs
bump into each other
and throw it all off.
The worst are the kumquats,
which fall to the floor
as soon as I add them.
It isn't natural
for a thin stem with fruits
to sprout up –
they're heavy,
they're supposed to just hang.
They scatter, get smashed
and stick to my shoes.
I once had one and tasted the chemicals.
It was fine to eat the skin.
At the end of the shift,
my broom sticks and skids
across the places they've been.
*
When orders are placed
from various phones
in the city, they suddenly appear
on my station’s iPad,
entering their spots
like ghosts on the list
which is categorized
by neighborhood.
Certain drivers
take loaded boxes
to designated stretches
and quickly deliver
the bar-coded flowers.
The app tracks the action
as it happens.
For many hours
with striped stray ribbon,
blinking batteries,
extra labels, and scissors,
seated at a brand new folding table
in a barely used vehicle,
I watch the lists change
stepping out now and then
to look across the street
at pale, flat apartments
and the wild cold sea.
