Song of Chrysanthemums.

one

Lorena didn't think she was dying.

Not when she fell to her knees on the cold and disgusting floor of the high school bathrooms. Or when she tried not to cringe as her cheek hit the strangely warm seat, hurling again into the toilet.

Sure, it was slow and painful to feel herself deteriorate from the inside out, but she wasn't dead yet. So she wasn't dying.

She looked behind her, eyes red and tired, to the crimson blood red path she had coughed up on her race to the bathroom, praying for an open stall. No one was in the bathroom to witness her hack up both the flower petals and blood while her nails dug into the toilet. Her right leg had peeled up during that time, almost as if her body reflexively tried curling into itself from the pain.

That afternoon, she had not only coughed up her lunch, but the blood and the petals that everyday itched a part of her that she could not reach unless she first tore herself apart.

Her curse was unforgiving and unrelenting, setting its eyes on anyone foolish enough to fall in love with no chance of reciprocation. And in her upper body, tangled in her abdomen, weaving around her ribcage and fucking up her lungs were chrysanthemums, slowly polluting her body faster than her system could expunge it.

She should never have let herself fall for Him. She could feel another petal coming up, but her feet stood still and her hands turned to grip the counter with all she could. Of course he didn't feel the same way; not when all his ex girlfriends looked the way they did and Lorena just looked like, well – Lorena. She dry heaved into the counter and her body uncontrollably lurched forward. With her retches echoing in the empty bathroom, she prayed for the petal to come out just so she could cry properly. But the tears rolled and her throat convulsed anyway.

Lorena coughed it up just as the automatic toilet flushed and turned to the mirror to study her bloodshot eyes and dead face. She wiped the blood from the corners of her mouth, reapplied her lip liner and tried not to pity her own reflection.

In two weeks, she swore to herself: she would be back in the same spot, not staring down a pitiful and lovesick fool, but one that was free from her burden. It was either that, or be consumed by both the chrysanthemums and death.