𝑰𝑵𝑲 • 𝑻𝒆𝒘𝒌𝒆𝒔𝒃𝒖𝒓𝒚 / 𝑳𝒐𝒖𝒊𝒔 𝑷𝒂𝒓𝒕𝒓𝒊𝒅𝒈𝒆

Forget Me Not

5 months ago

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Sometimes I envision us running away

As selfish as it may sound

I can't bear the thought of not being with you

Of not having you around

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When Florence was born, her father had planted a tree.

It was this sapling he had been growing in a large pot behind their house. The seed had been planted when he first found out he would become a father.

He had placed the tree on the edge of a lake, beside the church they would attend every Sunday. Or at least they did until they moved. When she was old enough to understand the things around her, her father took her to the tree.

At the time, she was taller than it was. It's still thin trunk stood barely a foot tall, and its leaves hung sloppily from the branches. He told to her that this was how it was supposed to look because it was called a weeping willow. He only laughed when she told him how awfully sad that sounded.

They had had to move before she could see it fully grown, and by then it was already far too big too simply uproot and take with them. It had surpassed her in height around age five which she found thoroughly unfair, but he explained to her that everyone grows at the pace they were meant to grow at, and if the tree grows faster than her, than it was for a reason. It didn't make much sense to her then but, It sort of made even less now.

Because what he was implying was that everything happens for a reason. That there's some big scheme for the entire universe that will happen the way it should. But she couldn't find a good reason for her father to be taken away from her.

I hadn't realized just how dry the year had been until it was raining, hard. Every raindrop shot the carriage roof like a bullet, blending into this sea of constant gunfire. We were en route to the old church. My mother and father had made reservations to be buried beside each other from the time they were married.

When I was younger I remember asking them why there wasn't one for me. My mother told me that I would be buried next to my own husband when the time came, but wholly unsatisfied with that answer, I went to my father.

He told me that I was infinite. That it didn't really matter where we were buried, because even if we were buried apart, we would be able to find each other later on. That when the body inevitably fails you, the mind travels on and resumes life in a better place.

And sometimes I wish I wasn't so pragmatic, because that seems like such a wonderful thing to believe in. But I am, and I know full well that he is just gone, and that I will never see nor speak to him again.

The last words he said to me weren't even spoken, rather inked onto a piece of paper, leaving it up to myself to imagine his voice delivering them to me. And he told me not to be afraid of finding my own family.

I think if that's what he really wanted for me, If he really wanted me to find someone to marry and spend my life with, then that's what I should do. Dying wish and all.

My mother is sat beside me but I don't think she's really here. Something about the way her eyelids droop over half of her greying irises tells me she hasn't been here for a while. Or at least not since I handed the letter to her.

By then I thought I had calmed down just about enough to be strong for her like he would have wanted me to be. But watching my mother crumble brought me down all over again.