February is the season of love as June is such for flowers

Poppies

The flower was beautiful. A blinding red. It symbolised events we could never imagine and never wish on anyone. Yet they were a sign of hope and peace, laying their roots in the lands of war. When all you could hear for miles was the reverberating gunshots, screams and explosions. When adrenaline ran high and those caught in the rift were consumed in grieving determination.

Loss, to them, wasn't new. It was a tale older than time itself, because they were time. They had watched calm turn to destruction before they could properly find composure and reassurance in themselves and what they promised to be. What they swore would be something lasting and soft.

Love in a time riddled with war wasn't something anyone thought they could get around. Honestly, they both feared backlash and betrayal. Yet their spark burned bright, like they were each others sun and moon, living lanterns of feeling that they never wanted to let go of. 

Because they were an anchor for each other. They couldn't lose their grip otherwise they would drift, worlds, centuries, lives apart as the flowers watched in mild satisfaction. In virtue that, every poppy they picked for each other, a reminder of the fondness both carried with full hearts, was a loss to the countless fields of nature, one more pulled from its place in the ground to die in the coming weeks.

Yet that never stopped them. Love was something strong, weaved and said through displays of affection. Not even war could set them apart, push their feeling down and burry them with the burden of death and destruction. 

Though it could. Because he died, didn't he? Left his husband ,in heart, and caused a deep sorrow and regret to overcome. Since he had no one to keep him sane, he went insane, bent on avenging the petal long since wilted with the appearance of red eyes and grey skin, cold and decaying, as if it wasn't inevitable he would leave eventually.

Still the war wore on, leaving more bodies in its wake, leaving nothing but waste for those still standing to look at and hope that wasn't them anytime soon, or whishing to join their friends in a peaceful afterlife, rid of the green and yellow and red, rid of the ash that laid permanent in the air and ground, rid of the effects of gunpowder and explosions. 

All he felt was the hole left by a husband resting in the grave above his house, whispering sweet pledges of reunion, words that tasted like honey, smelt of insecurity, sounded gentle. He could look past the lies and the unsure in the vows when he just wanted to believe, yearned for it to be true.

Soon, he too was lost to a war he didn't feel the need to fight in anymore, slain at the hands of a king who had lost his sanity since seeing the dark and crimson, listening to the inviting denotation of victory and success.

He didn't watch as poppies grew from where blood stained the grass, around his body, quietly admitting to the world he was lost to fate. Because it wasn't their choice where life and death took him next, not their decision to praise or scrutinize fading efforts.

Yet poppies decorated the ground in silent sorrow.

They were dead yet together. A price both were willing to pay.

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Almost caught up!