a collection of short stories and skewed thoughts

the girl who was a flower

We walk around our condensed enclosure of a town near the time the sun sets as we have many times before. I haven't gotten much sleep recently but I wouldn't trade these walks for an endless summer. I look at her and I see spinning though she is not. I see dizzy and I see soft and I see confusion all just in the way the light and her hair play together. When she talks it sounds like a small local coffee shops with homemade pastries. When she talks I don't understand what she says, but I want to.
She talks about the way people think and about how if she could be anything in the world it would be a daisy.
"'Petal' is an awfully beautiful word, don't you think?"
The words don't register.
If I could be anything in the world it would be hers.
We continue to walk and she continues to spin without spinning. Capturing attention without paying any is her speciality. The others tell her that she's different but she knows that. I know that. Everyone who's ever known her has known that. But I'm not so sure anyone really truly knows her. I want to.
"Where would you like to go next?" I ask lamely.
She says wherever I want, like always. That frustrates me, but when I see in the way her skin glows that she is happy right now, I conquer. Silently, we walk west.
The sky has melted unto itself and I watch her watch it. I want to say something, but my throat closes and I hope she turns around instead to see my eyes. I hope my eyes say what my mouth cannot.
She doesn't turn.
We sit in a field of daisies and tall grass; our heads safely hidden under the thousands of protective green blades. She's playing with the petals and the stems of her treasured flowers. Her fingers are delicate and her face is soft in the fading light. I don't grab her hand, but I want to. I don't say anything, but I want to.
I can tell I'm not right for her in the way I wish I was. I don't understand her, I can't speak to her or hold her hand, even if I want to. Her walking is dancing and her humming is a choir. To watch the small rise and fall of her chest as she watches the birds overhead is to read your favorite book for the first time. She's got a way of smiling at everyone as if each smile was personally and particularly selected for every individual. She is a daisy and she is the melted sky and she is everything beautiful and complex and simple and sweet and sad all at the same time. Always capturing, but never captured. Thinking without thought. An absolutely wondrous enigma.
I guide her back to her house as she goes on about things beyond my comprehension. I don't mind as long as I can hear her coffee shop voice. I tell her goodbye, but "Goodnight" is what she says when she hugs me. As she turns to walk (dance) up the stairs to her apartment, I whisper,
"You're a daisy."
She stops dead in her tracks though her back is facing me. Slightly her head turns, and it's just enough for me to see her side profile and the edges of a very personal and particular looking smile. I turn on my heel and walk home, never once allowing that dizzy little smile to slip from my mind.
Later when I lay in bed contemplating how she manages to contemplate the things she does, my phone rings. It's her. I talk to what I wish were my daisy for what seems like days. Finally after her breathing evens out into a delicate sleep, I put down the phone. I think about petals and love.
I know that to her, our talks and our walks and our endless phone calls are just that. They hold no deeper meaning and no further intention.
But to me, I realize, it is not just her that spins. She makes my world spin. She makes me dizzy.