1. Acquire a flower – most preferably one with sentimental value, otherwise why are you even bothering. You need emotion to motivate writing.

2. Spread out each petal so that it lays flat on the tissue paper. Make sure the stem is gone because why on earth would you press a stem. Unless you are composing an Ode to Thorns, paired with the poetic balance of beauty and pain. Be still my heart.

3. Cover both sides of the flower with the tissue paper in order to soak up the fluid. Whilst doing so, formulate a simile about the tissue soaking up the lifeblood of the flower like the pillow soaks up your tears every night. Find other love-sick examples on the world-wide-web.

4. Place the flower in a tight vice, or for regular people, under a stack of heavy books. The flower will bleed into their pages like its sentiment into my memory. Make up your own sappy lines.

5. Leave it untouched for (a very long) two weeks in order for it to dry out. Contemplate the ins and outs of floral imagery, fricative lexical patterns and tripartite lists during this time.

6. Be very delicate when uncovering it and laying it out, for it may disintegrate. Place a pin in the middle of the flower to secure all the petals. No deserters. This is a good time to mention the fragility of dead things.

7. Frame it. Hide it. Burn it. I don’t care as long as you promise to write about pressing matters, pressing flowers.

– Sarah Al-Hajj

Note: This piece was previously published in Sarah Al-Hajj’s poetry pamphlet, Wonky Fingers, in February of 2024.