Purple in the rain

By Madan Shrestha

The rain had just stopped when I spotted them. A whole row of hydrangeas tucked between a convenience store and an old wooden house, their purple heads bent low with the weight of water.

The air smelled of wet concrete and damp earth, and the only sound was the occasional drip from a rusted gutter.

I stood there for a while, watching the light shift through the clouds. The flowers seemed almost too vivid for the gray street around them — like they had decided to bloom extra bright just to spite the drizzle. A woman walked past with an umbrella and smiled at me, as if we shared a secret.

That's the thing about urban flowers. They don't ask for much. A bit of soil, some rain, and they'll turn an ordinary sidewalk into something worth stopping for.