ugly

Prompt: Write a short piece, either fiction or non-fiction, about something ugly – and find the beauty in it.




"That has to be the ugliest cactus I have ever seen," my new husband told me as we were moving into our new home.

"I don't know," I shrugged. "It's not that bad."

The cactus was hideous; it was three feet tall, awkward, and narrow, with a couple of stubby outgrowths that couldn't really be called branches. It was covered with so many spines that it looked a mottled gray instead of green. I had tried improving the look by placing the cactus in a brillantly scarlet pot, with no success. It was now ugly in a pretty pot. I had taken to calling the cactus Jezebel.

Jezebel weighed more than I could lift by myself, so I asked my husband to help me move it from the truck to our patio. Larry put his back into the job and was covered in spines before he was able to put the obnoxious plant down. I knew from many firsthand experiences that those spines were painful; they were so fine that they were almost impossible to see and therefore difficult to remove from the skin. Larry complained loudly as he went into the house to change out of the sticker-infected clothing. I resigned myself to spending our first evening in our new house with tweezers instead of a cabernet. I stared at Jezebel sitting on my new patio.

The cactus was ugly, no doubt. I remembered pulling it from a bargain bin at a nursery. I'd nurtured it from a small gangly twig smaller than its spines. I bought it special cactus soil and special cactus food. I talked to it. I did not overwater. I brought it inside when the weather turned freezing. That this particular plant had made it this long was a testament to the will to survive that exists in all things. Still, I had had many opportunities to rid myself of Jezebel over the years.

"Why are you here, Jezebel?" I said aloud. I went back inside the house to finish some more unpacking and take care of my husband.

The morning after an exceptional benevolent spring rainstorm, Jezebel greeted me one morning completely decked out in tiny, bright, purple flowers. I was struck silent by how intensely beautiful it appeared. Within a month, Jezebel was dead. It seemed to me, at that point, that the cactus had only been waiting for the right opportunity to let its true beauty shine forth.