Paul Rees - Civil Celebrant

06/06/2026

💜💜💜

Nobody told me grief could crack the ground open
and something still grow through it.
The white flower has no business being here —
one stem, six petals, yellow at the center,
pushing through cracked earth the color of old ash
as if it had somewhere important to be.
I found his handwriting on a seed packet last spring.
Cosmos. Plant after last frost. Full sun.
He had pressed the flap down carefully,
the way he did with everything that mattered.
The packet is still in the kitchen drawer.
I have not planted them.
I keep meaning to.
I keep picking up the packet and putting it down,
feeling the dry rattle of what is inside —
small, dark, each one carrying what it knows.
The cracked earth in this image is not empty.
That is the thing I keep returning to.
The crack is where the flower found its way.
Not despite the damage. Through it.
But I am not there yet.
The packet is still in the drawer.
I can hear the seeds when I pick it up.
I have not decided what that sound means.
— Tears of Memory

06/06/2026

Someone laid a rose on the floor and walked away.
I keep thinking about who did that, and why.
It's lying on its side the way things lie
when they are no longer being held.
The stem still has its leaves.
The petals have gone that deep pink
that roses go when they are almost
past the point of being called alive.
No vase. No water. No surface
arranged to receive it — just the pale floor
and the rose on it, stem and bloom,
the whole length of it given over:
and I felt you near me then.
Not comfort. Something older.
The way a thing that has been tended
still carries the warmth of the hand.
I have left things on surfaces before —
a glass, a book, a set of keys —
and forgotten why I set them down.
This rose knows why it is there.
The petals at the edges have begun to curl.
The color is still true.
I don't know what to do with it.
I don't know what it's waiting for.
— Angels Are Near

06/05/2026

😔💜💜💜

06/05/2026

So true… 💔💜

The size of your grief is the exact size of what you lost.
It isn’t drama. It isn’t weakness. It isn’t “still not over it.”

It is love, shattered. It is the life that should still be here.
Around this table, no one gets to make your grief smaller.

You and your grief are welcome here, exactly as you are. 💔