Alaula

My mind wanders. Even in such a beautiful place as this nursery tucked in a corner along the Koolau mountains, where everything is a lush, untouched green, and dense, wet clouds hang over its peaks like pillows. Everyday, I tend to the ankle biter plants, the 'Ihi, the 'Akulikuli, the 'Ilie'e. Large patches of them receding to a vanishing point. Sprinklers go on and off. On and off. I clear out tracts. I fill in tracts. I plant flowers. Tend to them. I load them into a truck, and plant more. My mind wanders.

My girlfriend, Alaula brings in a new plant. Her name means dawn, or daybreak. In the early days I slipped and called her Dawn, as a nickname. But she grew increasingly offended, and so now I call her Alaula. It's a beautiful name with a beautiful meaning that I wake up next to every morning. The flower she carries looks thugged-out, as if it's made of metal. It has a thick stem with thorns, and a mad serrated spiral of table saw petals. It isn't majestic like the Loulu, with it's fanned out palms. Not a tree or shrub at all. It isn't as innocuous as an 'Ae'ae, with its petite flowers. It is an angry, rugged, tough looking flower. Like some unique Hawaii plants, there may be a story behind it. Maybe some deity interfered with two lovers, and banished them... as usual.

Take the Ohia Lehua tree, a twisted tree with a red spiky flower. The legend goes: Pele, the volcano goddess, fell in love with a warrior named Ohia. She proposed to him and he turned her down. He was in love with another woman named Lehua. Infuriated, as only a volcano goddess could be, Pele turned Ohia into a twisted tree. This broke Lehua's heart, and witnessing this, the other gods felt a smidgen of sympathy for her. So they turned her into a flower. A red blossom now grows on the tree and this means they were conjoined together. So grows Ohia Lehua, the only tree that can actually take root in lava rock. The two lovers grow and bloom in their persecutor's terrain, together forever in spite of her hostility.

Take the naupaka plant. Two versions grow in Hawaii – one along the shorelines, and one high in the mountains. On the shorelines, the flowers that blossom are missing petals from the top half. In the mountains, the flowers are missing the petals along the bottom. A princess fell in love with a commoner, and their love was forbidden by the elite. The gods disapproved, and so the princess tore a naupaka flower in half. She gave her lover one half and clutched the other to her chest. "We can no longer be together. You live by the water, I'll live in the mountains." And in this unhappy ending, the flowers – sentient back then – said "Bummers," and began blooming in half flowers from then on.

Sentient flowers. Who knew? People sing to their flowers. They play music. They lovingly spray their leaves with water. I don't feel that way. This job is not for me. Still, I am drawn sideways to the plants. I know there is power here. That night, Alaula and I sneak back in using my gate key and sleep next to a patch of 'Ilima papa. We feel it buzzing. I feel the entire garden humming with life.

The next day, we wake up, our backs as knotted as a banyan's roots. The entire nursery staff is staring at us. "Morning," I say, still in yesterday's work clothes.

Mr. Kato, the boss, walks up to me and hits me in the jaw. My head snaps back and I'm looking skyward. My feet momentarily rise as if I'm backfloating across time. I hit the dirt with a hollow thud. Alaula rushes to help me. I struggle to get back up like a caterpillar rolled onto it's side. "What? We just... fell asleep is all!" I spit out, but I know that's not what they see. I take a look around and see the entire nursery destroyed as if all of the plants had withered as if they had all been poisoned. I do that in my sleep? Did Alaula? The two of us?

In the corner, however, is that odd flower that she had brought in. In it's center there are now yellow paisleys swirling about in its petals. It is a lone figure of guilt.

"Aye," I say. "It wasn't me. It was that plant. That nameless thing."

Mr. Kato wants to kill me. They all do. We are fired. Alaula is heartbroken. I tell her we'll be okay. We'll work elsewhere. We have a dozen connections.

Still, we swear it was the flower. Somehow, for reasons beyond us, it is responsible. I firmly believe this is true. We don't nurture a world of plants, we are ruled by it. We are the byproducts of plant life – of the love and politics in the realm of petals. We mosey about, thinking they live and die by our sprinklers, but when the sun goes down, some petals fold while others destroy entire nurseries.

Later I hear they've named the strange new flower Alaula, after my girlfriend. And the mystery of its origin deepened. Weeks later, the entire garden had been blanketed by these new flowers. Slowly, they crept across the landscape, choking out all other forms of vegetation. It is the fastest infestation the island has ever experienced.

As months passed, the damage became terminal. It was a rarity to see even a single tree with leaves yet to fall from it's suffocated branches, Alaula flowers growing at their trunks as if they were trying to climb them. The grass across Oahu's yards grew dry and brown as more Alaula sprouted, forming craters of decay around every stem.

By the time the government declared Oahu an ecological disaster zone, the flowers had overtaken our bedroom, and were quietly growing through the plumbing and the walls. Alaula, my girlfriend, had created a small nursery for them and slept under the taller stalks at night.

"Where did you find that first one?" I once asked her.

"Is this all somehow my fault?" she shot back. She took a flower in her hands and placed her delicate fingers along it's stem. The paisleys in its petals swirled and turned from yellow to red as she applied pressure between her fingers. When she snapped the flower's stem its petals turned black instantly, as if it had been unplugged. A milky fluid leaked from the break in the stem and dripped to the soil, where more flowers began sprouting instantly.

She cradled the flower and laid it on its side. "This is a new dawn," she said, noticing a small inscription behind one of the flowers petals.

Quietly, secretively, she began reading.