Flowers are restful to look at. They have neither emotions nor

Host: The room was half in shadow, half in light, the kind of late afternoon that feels like a held breath before the world exhales. Outside, the rain had stopped, and through the window, the sky glowed that tired kind of gold — not bright, but bruised. A vase of lilies sat on the table between Jack and Jeeny. Their petals were still damp, their fragrance heavy — almost too human for something that claimed to have no soul.

Host: The café was nearly empty. A distant piano played from the corner, soft and uncertain. Jack sat with his hands folded, his gray eyes distant, his voice low, calm — but you could feel the current of something darker beneath it. Jeeny sat across from him, her dark hair loose, her hands wrapped around a cup of tea she’d long since stopped drinking.

Host: The vase glimmered faintly between them — a small, perfect stillness.

Jeeny: “Sigmund Freud once said, ‘Flowers are restful to look at. They have neither emotions nor conflicts.’” She smiled faintly. “Maybe that’s why he liked them — they didn’t talk back.”

Jack: “Or maybe that’s why he envied them,” Jack said, his voice like gravel softened by rain. “No emotions. No conflicts. No messy human need.”

Jeeny: “You say that like it’s a blessing.”

Jack: “Isn’t it? Think about it — no heartbreak, no doubt, no guilt. Just growing. Existing. They don’t fight their purpose; they just are. That’s peace, Jeeny. That’s what everyone’s chasing.”

Host: The light shifted, crawling higher along the lilies’ pale stems. Jeeny’s eyes caught it, her expression softening as if seeing something sacred.

Jeeny: “You call that peace. I call that emptiness. Flowers don’t love, Jack. They don’t dream. They don’t choose the sun. They just turn toward it because they’re programmed to. That’s not peace — that’s obedience.”

Jack: “Maybe that’s the difference between us and them — we think too much about what we’re turning toward.”

Jeeny: “And maybe that’s what makes us alive.”

Host: The wind outside caught the windowpane and rattled it — just once, sharply — before fading back into silence. The world, for a moment, seemed to be listening.

Jack: “You know what I envy about them?” he said. “They don’t pretend. Humans wrap every emotion in a costume — call desire ‘love,’ call fear ‘prudence,’ call ambition ‘purpose.’ But flowers? They just open when they’re ready. No explanations. No apologies.”

Jeeny: “And then they die,” she said softly.

Jack: “So do we.”

Jeeny: “Not like that,” she said, her voice trembling, but not from weakness — from passion. “When flowers die, they don’t remember what they could’ve been. They don’t regret who they bloomed for. We do. That’s what gives it meaning, Jack — the struggle. The conflict Freud wanted to rest from is the same thing that makes beauty possible.”

Jack: “You think pain is beautiful?”

Jeeny: “No. I think pain is proof.”

Host: A silence fell — dense, charged. The lilies seemed to lean slightly toward the light, their petals trembling in the faint current of air from the open door.

Jack: “So you’d rather live like this — pulled apart between feeling and reason — instead of just being?”

Jeeny: “Yes. Because peace without emotion is just numbness. You think flowers are peaceful because they can’t feel. But maybe they’re lonely too — if loneliness means never knowing love or loss.”

Jack: “You romanticize everything. Even flowers. Freud would’ve told you it’s just projection.”

Jeeny: “And Freud spent his life dissecting love to explain it away. You can’t dissect wonder, Jack. You can only kill it that way.”

Host: The sound of the piano drifted — slow notes dissolving into air like tears into rain. Jack turned toward the window. Outside, a small boy was trying to sell bouquets to passing strangers, each flower bruised from handling, each smile forced. Jack’s gaze softened.

Jack: “Maybe you’re right. Maybe they’re not peaceful — maybe they’re just silent witnesses. Standing there while we pour every emotion we can’t name onto them. Funerals, weddings, apologies — we make them feel for us.”

Jeeny: “Exactly,” she said. “We give them meaning they never asked for. We turn them into metaphors for what we can’t say out loud.”

Jack: “So maybe flowers are mirrors — not rest.”

Jeeny: “Mirrors that don’t judge. That’s why we can look at them.”

Host: The light dimmed as the sun sank lower. The lilies’ shadows stretched long across the table, thin and translucent, like ghosts bowing before night.

Jack: “You know what’s funny?” he said, after a while. “We spend our lives chasing peace — and when we find it, we call it death.”

Jeeny: “And maybe death is just the first time we stop resisting.”

Jack: “You really think that’s what he meant? That the peace of flowers is the peace of death?”

Jeeny: “Maybe. Or maybe he meant something simpler — that when we’re tired of our own storms, even silence looks like heaven.”

Host: Jack’s cigarette burned low, its ember flickering weakly before going out. He crushed it in the ashtray, the sound soft, final.

Jack: “I think Freud just wanted to look at something that didn’t argue back. Something that didn’t remind him of himself.”

Jeeny: “And yet he chose flowers — not rocks.”

Jack: “Because even in peace, he still wanted beauty.”

Jeeny: “Because even the quietest soul still craves color.”

Host: The rain began again — gentle, steady. The lilies bent slightly under the cool mist from the open window, their scent deepening, richer now. Jeeny reached out and adjusted one stem that had drooped too far. Her fingers lingered there, light, reverent.

Jeeny: “You know what I think, Jack?” she said softly. “I think the reason flowers are restful to look at isn’t because they lack emotion. It’s because they remind us what emotion looks like when it’s finished struggling. When it’s at peace.”

Jack: “You mean acceptance.”

Jeeny: “Exactly.”

Host: Jack’s gaze moved from her face to the lilies, then back again. A quiet understanding passed between them — something neither of them could name, but both felt, like sunlight through glass.

Jack: “Then maybe we’re all flowers in our own way — just trying to find that peace before the petals fall.”

Jeeny: “And maybe the conflicts we hate are just the growing pains of the bloom.”

Host: The rain continued — soft, endless. The café lights flickered once, then steadied. The lilies shone pale and calm, their beauty unbothered by the chaos of human thought.

Host: And as the world outside blurred into rainlight, Freud’s words lingered between them — not as a truth, but as a question:

“Flowers are restful to look at. They have neither emotions nor conflicts.”

Host: Yet sitting there, watching those quiet blooms, Jack and Jeeny both knew — peace without pain is not rest. It’s absence. And maybe what makes flowers so beautiful is that they hold our storms for us — in silence.