Simple Things | ✓

FRINGED GENETIAN

| FRINGED GENETIAN: I LOOK TO HEAVEN. |
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{TRIGGER WARNING}

She was about to jump.

When baby birds leap from the tree for the first time, they are unafraid and fearless, but she was trembling.

Tongues of fire licked at her insides. It was very early in the morning, so early the sky was black. She thought it was fittingly so; she felt black inside. There were no stars or any sign of light across the darkness. She couldn't see anything and was thankfully blind. She couldn't see the ground.

She shifted to her opposite foot. What was she waiting for? Some kind of divine intervention?

Maybe she would count. Yes, that was fitting also. As if she was counting sheep to fall asleep, which she was doing, in a way. Would she count as she fell? What number would she whisper before she shattered into a million pieces?

It was cold too. She shivered, rubbing her arms. She couldn't have waited till summer? She loved autumn. This was not her plan.

She hesitated, doubt and fear and pain rippling across her thoughts. Maybe she should wait till summer.

She frowned suddenly, sternly. No. The summer was warm, but mornings started horribly early. How early would she have to get up? She didn't like waking up early, she knew that. It wouldn't be right, it wouldn't be perfect like she wanted it to be.

So why hadn't she jumped yet? She swallowed. Do it now! she thought suddenly, and then shied away from the edge. Sometimes she was so close to it her toes hung off the end. She WAS afraid of heights. It was fitting. She was afraid to die.

There, she had said it. She was afraid. She didn't want to. She stared desperately into the velvet blackness surrounding her, choking her with cold, bright oxygen. Oxygen was poison to her. It filtered through her lungs and made flowers crawl up her throat.

And then― there was light.

It was a soft, unnoticeable light. It was gold. It crept across the horizon like a sea of fire.

The blackness seemed to shriek and pull away from it, like demons before an angel. She was unable to tear her eyes away.

Now! her mind screamed as a last attempt. Before it's too late!

But she ignored it, drawn to the pink and lavender and orange flying across the sky in glittering colors, a paint spill over the cosmos, a beautiful mistake in her black morning.

It was the loveliest thing she had ever seen. She looked down. The roads were gray and glistening with dew. She looked back at the sunrise. It was gold and unfolding like the finest gauze and silk.

Exactly three tears slipped down her cheek and dropped to the ground below. Then she tore her eyes away from the sunrise, turned around, and walked away.

And many, many months later, she was walking along the road in the early morning. She had developed a hobby of waking up to see the sunrise every morning.

The road was deserted, sparkling against the newly born morning. She stopped, and knelt.

There was a tiny, beautiful flower growing between the cracks of the road. It was perfect and soft, and a pale pink color. She looked up, and as if struck by lightning, realized the flower had grown exactly below where she had stood that day. It was literally watered by her tears.

Carefully, she plucked the flower from the road and lovingly tucked it into her jacket.

And it thrived in her house in front of a large window, where she sat every morning to watch the sunrise unfold through its petals.