Bougainvillea
The vine was very basic, yet Bernardo took painstaking efforts to draw every feature of the specimen in his journal. On his trips throughout the Pacific in the last decade, he’d had the chance to draw and catalog the flora of dozens of islands. His work had been collected in Universities and studied by young botanists and scholars. Yet here he was, home at last, drawing this vine just like he had as a child. This plain green leaf whose only claim of prominence was that it grew out of the long-picked skull of the artist’s father.
Bernardo considered drawing his father’s skull in addition to the vine. Or the knife sticking from the rib cage. Just where Bernardo had placed it all those years ago when father refused to let his son leave the plantation. He shrugged off the thought. The plants deserved documented for future generation’s study. His father did not.
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