An herbarium, to press and preserve words no longer spoken
By Helen Kennedy (Highly Commended)
HIGHLY COMMENDED
in the Frazzled Lit Short Story Award 2025!
Listen to Helen reading her story:
The tumour is a glaucous ruby red plum, ripening to burst through my skull. When removed, it leaves a scar like a furrow, that leaks sticky brain juice. The surgeon hands me the decaying fruit of the glioma on a petri dish. The flesh is fibrous, like muscle. The smell of rusting pig iron. Strange, I think, for a vegan to grow meat. I look at myself in the mirror and struggle to organise my Playdoh features. A left melon eye that droops, a peach cheek that sags against my newly formed jowl. My partner, Tariq, smiles nervously, wondering if our newly planted love will blossom. Words won’t come. The Speech and Language Therapist is a ginger spun girl with an effervescent mouth. She froths words at me, but I can no longer speak.
I wander the garden that I have cultivated in my head, and choose words singly like seeds, ‘Euphorbia,’ and ‘Myrtle,’ rooted to my tied tongue. Words of shade and sun and temperate green earth; ‘Bergenia, Date Palm, and Crocus.’ Tariq stares at me, shakes his head. He says he doesn’t understand. He speaks slowly, syllabically as if we are speaking Arabic. ‘Alhaqiquh,’ he says. ‘Jesus, Aaliyah, why can’t you let the truth speak.’ I hurl expletives back at him; ‘Nerium Oleander, Aconite, and Water Hemlock.’ Tariq’s eyes are plunged into darkness. He signals to the nurse, and I am given a sedative. But the roots and neurones still push through.
We met at the end of the tube line, London stewing in a dry, visceral heat. I couldn’t remember the way to my front door, and Tariq walked with me, keeping a safe distance on the opposite pavement. It was the beginning of the blackouts, the dissociation. A time when common green; clover, chickweed, and grass crushed underfoot, began to turn brown. The sky as colourless as diamonds. Even the silver willow turned black. Tariq moved in with me, after only a month, bringing his small suitcase and he taught me to cook. Baba ghanoush, Mahshi, sweet figs and Kunafeh with syrup. Sweets made with rose water, and cardamon. In Syria, we pick the ripe fruit from the trees, he said. Everything grows. We talked about the future. It was a time for love when everything was still possible.
The botanist neurosurgeon says that I have parietal aspasia. Nature is a fickle thing. I must train the plum espalier, cultivate it after he has removed the dead and diseased spurs. New growth takes time, and we must be patient. In my hot house brain, thick succulent words are fleshed, Dracaena, moth orchid. Too fat to form and roll off my tongue. Some days I am silent and wait for rain. In the dark, I whisper extinct words almost in reverence; the ‘Azorean Veitch Vicia Dennesiana,’ lost in a landslide. Tariq holds a glass of water to my lips, speaks softly as if his words might bruise me.
Tariq cleared the scrubby back garden, the earth parched and cracked into deep splinters. We planted wind born seeds of pineapple mint and myrtle, nurtured green shoots in plastic Tupperware boxes. Saved drops of water in baked bean cans and in wrung out cloths. A new responsibility for survival. The only thing that changed was the angle of the sun. High. So high, it tore the sky apart. By July, the raw heat melted the black shine roads. Birds no longer nested. I fell into a stupor, and Tariq brought me here, to be cultivated.
I look out of the clinic window into the dark sky scape, afraid of the emptiness. The world has taken on a gangrenous fluorescent glow. I shout carnivorous words to laugh in the face of death, ‘Bladderwort, Pitcher and Drosera.’ They echo round the ward and the night staff sedate me. Some patients are already dormant; waiting for rain that will never come. When I wake, Tariq is reciting the Quran. He tells me to hold on, and talks about the temperate summer, when we lay on the grass in Victoria Park, the broad leaf trees giving shade. Cream silk magnolias and amber Acers growing over the Chinese pagoda. In my head, I circle the Piccadilly line, and my past seems miles away.
The dawn light makes me want to sing, ‘Pushing up daisies,’ Bellis Perennis. I press the alarm bell in joyful voice. Everything in the garden is growing. Synapses are in bud. Tariq squeezes my hand and holds me as if I am a single precious stem. I search for resilient adaptive words that have the capacity for survival. ‘Azolla, Sedum, Bamboo, Kernza Bracken Fern.’ Sustainable language to fix nitrogen. I hold on; rooted to life. My senses heightened, the raw smell of pine and Lavandula. The touch of Tariq’s petal soft fingers in mine.
The world turned bleach white. The air stung like nettle beds. People began planting plastic, bottle tops and straws, refillable coffee cups. The earth was dying. Its core turning molten and the pull of the conglomerate cities, built on rare minerals sparked fires that raged for months. Hackney became a ghost town, closed greengrocers, and corner shops that used to take up box space on the pavements. The silenced slang of market traders. London tilted as the river Thames dried.
The Botanist neurosurgeon prescribes infusions of Binomial Ginko Bilboa, Taxus, and photosynthesis treatment under heat lamps. He speaks slowly, sounds every word and Tariq translates. There are new lesions in the left anterior lobe, short stumpy spurs that have regrown. I have the capacity for regeneration. To capture nature in carbon and cell growth. In an induced coma, I will be able to remain dormant, overwinter until the planet can sustain life again. I will be harvested with words.
I slip away to the sound of Tariq breathing heavily. Transported to a garden with the scent of sweet tamarind, eucalyptus, and citrus orange blossom. Around me are thorny and glossy-leaved fig trees, thick with fruit. ‘Marhabana,’ Tariq is saying. He threads wild jasmine flowers through my hair and leans down to kiss my lips. I am laid out on the dewy grass in a white robe and know that I am sleeping. My brain, a herbarium, to press and preserve words no longer spoken.
Helen Kennedy is a writer of short and Flash fiction who has been shortlisted and published by NFFD, the Bristol Short Story Prize, Oxford Flash Fiction Prize, Brick Lane Bookshop Short Story Prize, Fly on the Wall Press, Reflex and the Aurora Prize for Writing . She had recently completed a debut novel, ‘Blessed Women’ and a second novel about fertility and Irish Folklore.
Find her on Insta @helenkennedywrites
This was so touching.