Papavers

I was flicking through the dictionary the other day, en route to para-something, when I found papaverous. I thought it was a pretty cool word because it sounds like some kind of cannibalistic diet of higher-order Christians but in fact means: of or pertaining to the poppy; fig, soporific. I saw some at the markets a few days later and took them home with me. If you've never bought poppies before, they come as a bunch of buds on crazy-straw stems, covered all over in tiny black hairs. A few flowers might be flashing pearly petals and you get to thinking how nice they'll look when they're all out at once, so you buy them and dump them in a vase. Within a day or so a few more have shaken out their skirts; within three, most of the buds are hanging their heads like pendulums off a triffid-esque grandfather clock. Then they shrivel up, and the water turns to poppy-slime, and you only ever got about four flowers out of twenty buds. They're pretty much the ultimate fuck-you flower; I love them for that.