Seeds of the Unsaid

March 16

I discovered three seeds at the base of my teacup in the kitchen’s quietest hours. Not lemon, not cardamom. Glossy and moon-colored, they sing to me when I tip them into my palm—a thin, unfinished apology pulsing inside them, like a word caught in the teeth.

March 17

I push them into the grooves of the linoleum while the kettle sings. The floor is splintered thanks to years of dropped plates, rushing feet, and arguments that included bruising. I tamp them down, feeling the quake of something tight and urgent, something that wants out. Inside, the house smells of chamomile and ghosts.

March 18

They appear overnight: spindly shoots pushing up through the grout. In my nightgown, I kneel and whisper to them, thinking intently about which apologies I never completed. The sprouts tremble as if with expectation, waiting for me to get it right.

March 19

Come morning, sunflowers bloom — impossibly miniature, their yellow faces are ticking in the half-light. The heart of each flower beats, a clockwork heart; its petals shudder. Amid the ticking, I can barely discern snippets — my sister giggling over too much toast, my mother’s voice: “It’s just rain, darling. You don’t have to be afraid.” The memory of an argument about the weather or the color of the curtains flickers and fades. Sunflowers bob their heads toward me, weighed down by things unspoken.

March 20

Now I long for my mother’s hands—warm, always busy, folding dough or smoothing hair. I remember standing at the counter, aching to know why she cried at the sink, aching to tell her I was sorry for words that went unspoken. The memory is like needlepoint through fog.

March 21

At 2:46 in the morning, the kitchen clock stops ticking. The sunflowers grow taller and taller; the linoleum lifts at the edges—time breaks. I miss breakfast and lunch. The sunflowers bloom and wither in rhythms I can’t follow. My hands remember more than my tongue: the warmth of the mug pressed between my palms, the faint stick of linoleum against my bare knees, the ache of wanting to explain myself and knowing I cannot and should not.

March 22

There was a single seed in my tea this morning. For a moment, I hesitate. My thumb hovers over the crack in the floor. I think about throwing the seed away, keeping the apology submerged. Yet the hum in my palm is quiet, but persistent. I press the seed into the linoleum, and relief and dread are braided together.

March 23

Awake, the sunflowers have mouths—petal lips humming with a memory I cannot quite recall. My sister’s teasing, sour and bright as lemon rind—“You always take the last piece!” The cool sadness of my father’s sighs—“Maybe next time.” The warmth of a friend’s forgiveness after months of silence—“It’s okay. I missed you too.” Every pair of lips forms an apology: I’m sorry I went away, for forgetting, and never asking if you were ok. Their voices are stacked up, echoes in a chorus, and I sit down on the floor. Apologies I never made, or never knew I needed.

March 25

The kitchen is overgrown with flowers, root systems snaking through the linoleum, petals brushing against the ceiling. I trace every thread back to its source, pinning each apology to a face and a moment in time. The effort leaves me dizzy. Remembering is like catching smoke: the particulars disperse, but my mother’s hands—how they squeezed my shoulder before I went off to school, how I shrugged her off—remain.

March 28

Every morning, I find more seeds in my tea. I plant them reverently, working into every crack. The kitchen is both a garden of remembrance and a garden of confusion. I know only the hush before the flowers speak, a hush that is the opposite of an embrace.

March 30

These are only a few sample days from my journal, with dates that can’t be trusted. The sunflowers sing—not songs, but apologies and forgiveness and fragments of conversations I never finished. Sometimes, I even recognize my own voice among them. Words I wish I’d said—sometimes, I listen. The kitchen is eternal, linoleum dissolving beneath a mat of roots. I am lost and I am found, lodged in the hum, the tick-tock, the ache of what’s almost remembered.

April (no date)

Now, kneeling among the blooms, I say it out loud: It is your pain—I’m sorry I never asked. Are you okay? I’m sorry I never let you cry on my shoulder. The sunflowers fall silent, petals trembling, and the air turns stagnant. Light pools warm and golden on the floor, and for an instant, the kitchen does not smell of ghosts; it smells of sunlight and bread. Somewhere in that humming, I almost hear the soft clink of a cup set down on the counter, the unfinished apology finally taking root, opening into the light.

Raymond Brunell writes speculative fiction where sound shapes reality and neurodivergent perception uncovers hidden truths about identity, control, and connection.