They love me. They love me not. They love me. They love me not.
The final petal falls the the ground and I sigh, discarding the empty stem in the soil and walk back inside.
The petal stack grows.
This is a hostage situation, and I know it I know but he's protecting me. He's hurt too, and yet he's helping me. Both of them are. When the petals appear, I hide them with his. But petals appear for him too. It's clicks for us both, but I'm more accepting than he is.
I can't accept. She's doing it out of pity.
Please, save us both. Please.
The garden he frequents is filled with the flowers he's grown from seeds surrounds them. In the earlier days, she would dance around the garden as he plucked the petals. Now she counts with him, as they lean against each other. But today she's not counting. So he counts for her.
The sun sparkles in the sky, turning all sorts of blues and purples as the night sneaks up around them. The flowers sway softly, dancing around each other, putting on a show for all that care to notice. The water's sparkle reflects in the green iris' full of pain and desperation, praying that he was dreaming. He was just counting, and when he got to the last one, a thud followed the slow fall of the petal. Why was she on the ground. Why wasn't she moving. He rushed to her, cradling her and shaking her softly, his shakes getting more and more intense. The wind picked up around them, the trees seeming to scream with him.
Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.
But there was no waking up.
His eyes fell to her lap, a crimson muddle of roses sitting there. She was cradling them, softly, even in death. She always treated his flowers so well-
These were not his flowers. They were hers.
The winds slowed, and the sky began to cry with the boy. The more he cried, the harder it rain. The garden was mourning with him, and the crackles of lightning drowned out his screams of anguish as he realized all those responses, all those acceptances were not pity, but agreement. They were confessions of their own right. She was telling him she loved him too because she did.
Those bouquets always did look a little too big, and he knows his flowers.
The sky crackled and poured, and the trees screamed, the wind whipped around the two, and then one last lightning strike lit up the sky. The sky still pours, the wind still howled, but the thunder vanished, the lightning stilled.
Two lone figures lied in the garden, one with still look, clutching at flowers in her lap. The other, cradling the body with one arm, and the other dropped over his forehead, stained the same color as her flowers. The flowers drip with the rain, almost as if they are crying too.
Flowers are beautifully mysterious, and startlingly meaningful. You can make an entire arrangement that means I love you, or that means I hate your guts, and both can be blissfully gorgeous in their own respects.
Gardens are supposed to be safe havens for rest, not a resting place.
The garden flourished on its own, creating a burial of its own, twisted vines and roots covering the bodies of those that once visited frequently. They were buried together, as they died together. Flowers may be in this garden, but their tomb were void of them all. Only vines and roots. From the earth they came, and to the earth they did return, just as the flower stems, and the petals plucked each day.
