sincerely, amity

flowers

July 12th

I get weaker every day. It takes everything in me to stand up. The doctors don't let me leave my room without supervision anymore. I can feel myself dying. I can feel my body shutting down.

Everything else is the same. Willow visits every Tuesday and Thursday, Gus every Monday, Hunter comes with Luz sometimes. Luz still stays the night every chance she gets, holding my hand, telling me about everything that's happening at school.

Mom and dad make efforts to see me. They come in when they have to. When the nurses tell them to.

I think a lot about who I want to write to next. I don't have many friends. I'm not leaving shit for my parents.

I know I need to hurry up and finish the letters, though. I don't know how much time I have left. It doesn't feel like long.

Sincerely, Amity

Luz remembered when Amity started getting worse. The nights when she'd have to hold Amity's hair back while she vomited into the toilet. The days when her blood pressure would get dangerously low.

She remembered how mentally drained she became in that time span. She never slept, she never ate. All she thought about was her girlfriend. No one knew if Amity would make it long after that downfall. There were nights when she felt nothing, as if Amity wasn't sick. Then there were nights when she wouldn't sleep until 4AM, hitting the walls or breaking her belongings.

Luz didn't know it was possible to feel how she did. She never expected to be so heartbroken, it physically hurt. She never showed that around Amity, though.

She flipped the page and continued to read.

July 16th

I keep getting flower deliveries. I hate them.

Flowers are for romantic dates, soft fields of grass in a park. They should be used for balcony decoration, or bushes in the front yard.

The more I receive, the closer to death I realize I am.

If flowers aren't on a date, or in a park, they're probably on top of a gravestone, and I'm not a gravestone. Not yet.

I hate the bright colors of red and pink that surround my bed. I didn't know remorse could be so blinding. Death should be sad, like blue, purple, or black. I guess that's why it's best to put them on top of a gravestone, I'll be so far down I wont be able to see their bright colors.

I hate watching the flowers wilt. It's like looking in the mirror. Watching the bright red roses go limp, and turn rotten and brown, it reminds me too much of myself. I'm just a lilac flower, slowly wilting. My hair falls from my head as the petals do the stem. I probably smell just as good as a dead flower as well.

I guess I have more in common with flowers than I thought. Not that I've ever compared myself to a flower..

The people who care about me treat me as delicately as a freshly picked flower, making sure not to crease my petals or rip my stem. Then there are the people who drop the wilting flower after seeing one much prettier in a far away field.

It's not fair. All flowers are beautiful, no matter their condition, so why are the wilting ones always tossed in the trash? Is that how I'll go? Will I just be tossed to the trash after I've lost my color?

No one likes a dead flower, though. I don't blame them.

Sincerely, Amity

Luz stared at the page, the words seemed to begin to mix the longer she did. Reading Amity's diary was a chore. Reading her thoughts like this was not what Luz wanted. She wished she knew how Amity had felt while she was alive, she wished she'd known she felt like a wilting flower. To Luz, Amity was the opposite of a wilting flower. She was a freshly-bloomed spring flower, the kind that only grows when the weather isn't too chilly, nor too warm. The kind of flower that catches people's eyes when they pass by in the car. The kind that children point out to their parents. She was a breath of fresh, April shower, air. She would be a relaxing, stress relieving essential oil, the kind that people put in the bath after a long day.

She was Luz's end-of-the-day relief. Physically or spiritually.

Luz set the diary on her nightstand, getting out of bed to stretch. She walked out of her room and into the hallway, silently shutting her door. She crept in the dark to Eda's door, slowly pushing it open and seeing that she was still awake.

The older woman looked up upon hearing the door open.

"Hey kid, you alright?" She asked, closing her book and lifting her reading glasses.

"Yeah," She entered the room and slugged over to Eda's bed, climbing in next to her.

She scooted closer to the woman, resting her head on her shoulder. Eda placed the book and her glasses on the table next to the bed, turning off her lamp. She wrapped an arm around Luz, squeezing her into a hug.

"You wanna hear a story about how I got my 10th grade teacher fired?" Eda softly asked.

"Mhm," Luz mumbled, snuggling into Eda.

The older woman snickered, beginning to play with strands of Luz's hair as she told the story.