Lilacs can drive you mad

Lilacs can drive you mad, if you let them.A regal madness, true. Every year the samepromises proclaimed, as if from above.Every year the same assurances not quiterealized. Same sensory-overloadedbouquet lost in shipping. Same mesmerizingmemories evoked, same intoxicatingperfume on the cusp of release. Slain oncemore by passing storms, furious winds, orsimply that rot. Gnawing away at roots, costof striving to live too long among the dead.

Let’s be honest here. Lilacs will drive youmad, if you let them. When a lilac tries tobloom, we bow our heads, rush our reverentnostrils toward it, as if inhaling a miracle wetoo could manifest. As if, beyond all oddsstacked against us--gale, hail, drought,flood, a sudden freeze. Hoping for the thawin relations that will waft us back to heavenonce more. Counting on a different outcomethan the last time those cockeyed-optimistic,purple fools, promised, and failed, to bloom.