COMING OUT

Or what you get when a writer has a head cold.

Yep, My muse seems to be suffering from my head cold too, because this is what she forced me to commit. Please remember, we wrote this while our head was stuffed, our lungs had a band of marauding germs doing the Macarena

and our ears had little buggies using

them as timpani drums.

COMING OUT

Humans don't look for cryptograms

in the people they live with each and every day, I think. That would explain why we are here, walking among you without you having a clue about who and what we are.

I don't know why, scientifically, you didn't recognize us, and truth be told, if we walked side by side in a Hall of Mirrors,

 I'm not sure I'd see the difference, even though my hair is blue.

Well, maybe not blue-blue, like the sky, and I suppose it would be more accurate to say my hair has a blue tinge to it. I'll be honest, I have seen blue hair on you humans---usually on your middle-phased-young-ones---

and they don't go for the subtle shades. I've heard the term "electric-blue" from some of your kind, and I would have to say that shade would describe the blue colors running through the strands of many of your middle-phased-young-ones to a tee!

Back to me. My hair color is sort of the color of ripened wheat with that hint of blue I mentioned earlier. I'm not sure how the blue got into my personal gene pool and we don't bother with the strict data banks you humans keep to trace ancestry. For all I know it could have dropped from the sky after spending miles on the prevailing

Trade Winds.

My limbs, as you can tell just from looking, are nowhere near as gnarled or tangly as some of my distant and unfortunately for passing purposes only, not so distant cousins. My Dad

is tall and powerful like an oak, and my Mom is as elegant as the most beautiful of irises

you've ever seen. They do make an odd couple, but they're happy, and because they're happy, so are we.

We, their children, are only the second generation to pass. Given how hard it is for my generation, I cannot imagine what coming out was like for Mom and Dad. Okay, maybe I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. Coming out when you can blend as well as we can, is not as difficult as it would be if we had, say, three heads, twelve fingers, and ninety-three toes. None of us are so deformed we cannot blend in with you humans. We may have to wear clothing designed by our own fashion icons to hide a few abnormalities, but nothing hideous or grossly misaligned, I can assure you.

Still being the first generation to test their blending capabilities with no predecessors to seek counsel from, given our long history of never revealing our dual nature, took courage. When I think about how easy it would have been for humans to destroy the last generation of my kind, I begin shivering. After all, you humans are not the most benevolent of creatures.

Please, please, I am not judging, just stating a fact; an understandable fact, but a fact, nonetheless. Humans are hunters, and that is certainly acceptable since food is necessary for all species existence.

We ourselves do not hunt, but then our longevity and continued presence doesn't require we take up arms of any sort to feed. I can see your brow furrowing and the involuntary step you took away from me. Uhm...look up!

The sun's shining, so I'm not a vampire

about to thrust elongated canines into your throbbing jugular, although I have seen my share of vampires. Tortured souls, so many of them. Others?...well beheading, stake through the heart, turning crispy critter at daybreak is a just punishment for their evil grazing habits.

Our nourishment comes from the sun and the land, which given the waves of change humans traipse through it, is probably a good thing. War, greed, jealousy, have nothing to do with our abilities to eat, flourish, and multiply.

Still two generations ago our people began to wonder what would it be like to walk among you humans. No one thought it would ever come about, or if it did, our differences would be so glaringly obvious you humans would whack us into submission moments after we transformed. My parents lived with that fear for over two hundred years before they realized our people were really good at this adapting gig.

Now we know they should have realized that all along. After all, throughout every calamity in history, our kind has survived and repopulated what humans, and even Nature reduces to its most barren state. So let me introduce myself...

...My name is Tara Forma and I am a plant! No! not that kind of a plant. I am an actual living plant. I look human, but I'm just like that rose bush or maple tree across the street...only a teeny bit more. My kind has walked this planet for almost 2500 years now, 2,483 to be exact, and we, the sentient plants are but one of the many diverse species that work and play beside you. We have chosen to reveal ourselves now because together, humans, plants, and others, can save this planet we all call Earth.

I am Tara Forma, and I am Coming Out...Of The Garden, raising a glass of nectar for our planet's future together.