She wears the run-down slippers of a local and in her arms, five rare protea wrapped in newsprint, big as digger pine cones. Our hands can’t help it and she lets us touch. Her brother grows them for her, upcountry. She’s spending the day on Oahu with her flowers and her dogs. Protea for four dogs’ graves, two for her favorite. She’ll sit with him into the afternoon and watch the ocean from Koolau. An old woman’s paradise, she tells us, and pets the flowers’ soft, pink ears.

Old Woman With Protea Flowers, Kahalui Airport by Kathleen Flenniken

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Texture from Goam, with many thanks.