Our Little Cherry Blossoms

twenty three. dread

ＪＵＬＹ (( ＬＡＲＫ ))

Metal gears grinding against each other in my head. Did I think this was romantic? Was I that self-righteous and arrogant to believe I had made the right decision to promise us happiness? In the years I've lived since then, grasping opportunity at its first appearance is the lifestyle that's been repeatedly hammered into my head. Instead of clawing after this perfect, unconditional love he gave me, a love I haven't seen since that icy afternoon we walked away from each other, I inhaled the pompous notion that we were too young to take anything seriously. Hands slipping into my pockets, my fingers tickle the shrivelled, hideous cherry blossoms we both promised to hold close until this day. I was a fool then for throwing away pristine happiness served to me on a silver platter, and I'm a fool now for keeping a broken promise.

Tinkling simpers flutter past me, and I stop walking to turn and see young school girls strutting away, the sunlight frolicking through their romping tresses. I stare after them for a while, them and the phones glued to their palms, inflections of the younger generation bubbling endlessly from their glistening lips. I glance down at my own phone in my hand, pressing it into my bag before continuing on toward the cherry tree. The black gate shimmers with a fresh coat of paint, but I do not approach the cherry tree on the other side. I stand, studying it through the fence like a petrified scarecrow. The figure sitting beneath its branches, lush with plump blossoms, quivers slightly in my peripheral vision, and I'm unable to meet his undoubtedly fathomless eyes. My sudden fear confuses me, but with it comes a familiar torrent of the delirium I used to feel when my heart was awake.

It's as if the core of my being is contracting and retracting over and over again, sending excruciating jolts of electricity throughout my body which manifests as countless beads of sweat kissing the skin of my back. Each time I force my gaze lower and lower from the blossoms to his motionless figure, the sweat pulses out of my body in cold waves. I'm straining to make out the endless wells where his soul would stare back at me until I realise that his eyes are closed, his chest rising and falling peacefully under the fractured shadow of our cherry tree. His hair is shorter than when I left him, his tan is more pronounced, his jaw sharpened, his face narrowed, his arms thinned. He both grew and shrank in the time I spent away from him. My heart is beating four beats quicker than the rise and fall of his chest, and the dead blossoms in my pocket are shrieking to be freed. I can't get in because I need a keycard to open the gate.

The shyness I thought was already buried returns and clamps down on my throat to choke my voice and strangle my movements, the corpses in my pocket still screeching as I slowly drown in remorse. Knees buckling, I fall to the brittle pavement and press my face against the wires when voices sound behind me. I can hear someone speaking on a phone, but nothing properly registers as dry sobs seize my body with spasms of an emotion so severe - an amalgamate of guilt and shame and incredulity smashed together - that each inhale grates the walls of my lungs as punishment for snatching his love and slamming it onto a contract written in my brain. I don't want to speak to him, so when I hear the screaming sirens followed by pairs of hands gripping my arms and shoulders, I don't resist.