stages of a burden | ranposano

i. daffodils

uncertainty.

How did he end up like this?

How did he end up struggling by the bathroom sink as if he was carrying the heaviest weight on his shoulders? How did he end up coughing his lungs out, blood-stained petals appearing in the palm of his hands with every heave?

The tile floor was littered in sun-coloured daffodil petals, all painted dark crimson that drowned out the brightness of the petal's pigment. He trembled as he pushed himself up from the floor, using the sink to support him, only to be met with his reflection in the misted mirror. His reflection that he couldn't even recognise anymore. What he saw in the mirror, the person that stared back at him at that moment: it wasn't anything like the city's greatest detective that he vowed to be. What stared back at him was a dishevelled, pathetic mess of a being. Tear-stained cheeks reflected the sunlight that seeped through the crack in the curtain.

The heaviness in his chest began to lighten as he calmed down from the coughing fit, the metallic taste still on the tip of his tongue that always lingered for a while after. The questions in his mind always managed to linger for a lot longer, longer than what he wanted.

How did he end up like this?

Harsh splashes of water emitted from the sink as he washed his sorrows clean from his hands, the echoes of the water shouting out the cries he couldn't manage to shout himself, cries that he didn't want to shout out himself. His mind spiralled every time he began to cough, hoping that maybe, just maybe, if he coughed hard enough, these unwanted feelings of his would come out in the sea of blood and petals.

He was confused and uncertain as to why this was happening to him.

Why him? What did he do to deserve to suffer this way? Why did his heart ache every time he saw her? Why is his heart making him suffer through so much pain, only to never be satisfied?

Why must his heart be so cruel to chase after someone that he couldn't have?

Even as the sun rose to its place in the sky, even as a new day began for everyone else: he was still stuck in the yesterday. A yesterday where he couldn't seem to escape. His heart was still trapped in a yesterday where he had a chance to undo all this.

A yesterday where his heart didn't choose her.