Flos

ACT V

     She left her house in the morning. It was a beautiful weekend just beginning, and nobody or everybody would go to see her body lying in her house.

     Vita stopped crying for herself in the solitude she inherited from her body to her soul, and went out into the neighborhood.

     She saw two little sparrows singing beautifully in the house next to hers. She saw a hammock swinging by itself in the house across the street. She saw the shadow of the tree's leaves on the ground, swaying with the wind.

     She was feeling everything.

     Why hadn't she felt any of that when she was alive?

     That question didn't matter anymore anyway. She had much to discover. Much to feel.

     The ladies from her neighborhood were approaching her house as she walked towards a long, white path leading to the street. She had finally been able to do it, after so much. She would have liked to discover more, feel more. She saw how the path turned completely white, and as she walked towards her path, she was enveloped by the light that emanated from it.

• —– ٠ ✤ ٠ —– • ·

     How strange death is, but even more so life.

     The more one delves into it, the less one truly knows what it is.

     We seek to understand what we are not willing to comprehend. We can come to understand many things, but we only truly comprehend few of them. When we comprehend something, we make it our own. We know it as ourselves, or conversely, we know nothing but we know it's there, that it exists, and that it matters.

     We don't understand someone who wants to be alone, there's no need to.

     We understand how essential it is to respect their desire.

     You can't save someone who doesn't want to be saved, but that doesn't mean we stop loving them.

     The funeral of a lonely young woman can also be defined with one word.

     Lonely.

     Very few relatives had time to attend, on these busy days. Others didn't even remember who she was. As for friends, better not to mention. The neighbors accompanied her aunt in offering their condolences. They found it very sad to see someone so young die before them.

     The two little girls didn't quite understand what the funeral was about, but they had both made a new friend.

     "You were her only close relative, weren't you?"

     The young man approached the woman he had spoken to on the phone.

     "That's correct," she replied, still lost in thought.

     "And I suppose you were her only close friend?" she asked.

     "Something like that," he hesitated before continuing, "Vita, she was a really strange girl, but very nice. I tried to talk to her several times but she always hid. Once I helped her put some small flowers in her window. That was really the only time we truly spent together."

     "Oh yes, I remember those flowers. I saw them this morning. They must have been very beautiful before they withered."

     "They were."