JOURNEYS

The Woman at the Flower Stall

She wasn’t supposed to be in Morocco.

It was a detour — booked in a moment of quiet rebellion when the silence in her apartment became too sharp. The kind of silence that echoes back what you’ve been trying to avoid.

She arrived in Marrakesh just before dusk. The sky was bruised gold, like it had been kissed too hard by the sun. Her sandals made soft sounds against the old stones as she wandered through the souks, not looking for anything, just needing something.

She found it in the smallest flower stall on a narrow side street — almost hidden between two linen vendors. The scent hit her first: crushed mint, orange blossom, and something wild. A woman sat behind a low table, her hands dusted in pollen, arranging blooms like blessings.

“You see with your eyes too wide,” the flower woman said, without looking up.

The traveler blinked. “What do you mean?”

“Your gaze pulls. It takes. You must soften. Let the world come to you.”

It wasn’t rude. It wasn’t even mystical. It was… true.

She had been straining to understand everything.

To decode each moment.

To read herself into places instead of reading what was there.

The flower woman handed her a single stem — deep indigo with a scent like old books and honey.

“For grief,” she said.

“How did you—”

“All women carry grief,” she smiled. “You’re just ready to name yours.”

The traveler paid without asking the price. She didn’t look at her phone for the rest of the night. Instead, she walked to the edge of the city, where the wind smelled like spices and sand, and let herself cry.

Not the loud kind. The kind that comes quietly, like a visitor finally allowed in.

The next morning, she returned to the flower stall.

It wasn’t there.

Only a cracked stone, a single petal, and the faintest scent of jasmine in the air.