Dwain Hated Daffodils So Much He Became One, or Was He One All Along

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Dwain never meant to become a flower. It just sort of happened—slowly, like all transformations born out of resistance. First came the color: that mustard yellow sweater he wore every spring, saying it was “good for the complexion,” though everyone knew it was daffodil bright. Then came the stems—his arms, long and flexible from years of pruning and sawing in the forestry co-ops, showing women how to run a chainsaw without fear. The daffodils always came up around him, uninvited. He’d cut them down, stomp them flat, curse their cheerfulness. Yet by the next spring, there they were again—golden heads nodding in judgment.

He used to live in a corner of California where you could spot the counterculture by the mile marker. A place where love had a thousand names and gender was a dance step, not a rulebook. To appear homophobic there was like walking around with a sign saying I’m scared of my own shadow. Dwain saw it all—the communes, the ashrams, the forest co-ops with their soft laughter and hard hands. He was useful there, with his muscles and his quiet way of making engines hum.

He’d learned about contradictions early. His high school girlfriend’s mother, once “Mama,” had become “Papa” after a revelation of self. Dwain didn’t mind, though he never said much. He just noticed how names changed but tenderness didn’t.

Years later, Dwain sat before his meditation teacher, a man who preached detachment but burned with lust for every woman in the room. The teacher spoke of purity, of disease as punishment, of divine justice that somehow always looked like prejudice. Dwain watched and thought: maybe holiness is just another costume for fear.

He remembered the story that teacher told—of a bar, a body, a discovery—and how his laughter afterward carried something like pain. That was the night Dwain realized everyone was performing something, everyone hiding inside their chosen petal.

Dwain, the ex-faller, the polymorph, said once, “I find pleasure in everything.” He meant it. In wind, dirt, bark, even in the green shoots pushing through the dark. He didn’t believe in labels. He believed in becoming.

By the time the town saw him again, he was sitting at a table by the window, holding a glass full of daffodils. His beard curled like new growth, and his eyes had that same unyielding yellow in them.

He smiled faintly, as if he’d just understood something.

He’d hated the daffodils because they refused to hide—bright, unapologetic, open to the sun.

Now he realized he’d never really been different from them.

He just needed a few seasons to bloom.