Standing tall against the summer storm like I was already a full-grown sunflower, I felt the weight of the heavens fall against my unopened petals and beat down upon my closed up bouquet. And I understood that I deserved every minute of that downpour. 

That rain is why those petals never opened, why that me never bloomed, why I once again woke up lying in the dirt of my own brittling backyard garden, and why once again all my bright golden browns and yellows and sunshine colors bundled into the middle of that hopeful, unopened summer sunflower never rose to face another sunrise.

Instead of clipping grown-up flowers for brightening my morning, I captured the photograph of that memory of who I once almost was, and that’s all that ever made it into the vase in my living room. Every almost sunflower I ever used to be stands together inside that glass, not tall enough or bright enough or alive enough to breathe deeply and smile 

back at me. And like all my unreached dreams, they can’t brighten my home. They just collect dust like everything else with the passing of time. I can accept my fading brightness as the kind of growing thing that I am doomed to be, or I can plant the seeds of last summer’s almosts and see what grows next.