A Horrible Flower

❝there is something horrible about a flower;
this, broken in my hand,
is one of those
he threw it in just now;
it will not live another hour;
there are thousands more;
you do not miss a rose.❞

🌹🥀🌹

"So why did this"-my therapist gestures to my shaking hands, my red eyes, my tangled hair-"start happening?"

My eyelids fall shut on their own accord. "I don't remember anymore."

I do remember.

"It must've been a traumatic experience," she observes.

"A horrible experience," I agree.

I decide it's easier to agree.

"How old were you?" she asks.

"Young. Too young. I don't know."

Nine.

"The way you behave now stems back to that childhood experience," she tells me, as if I don't know this already. "You were still a pure thing. A flower. It's easy to ruin a child's life forever. To create a horrible flower."

🌹🥀🌹

LILLIANA is a horrible flower. She is dark eyes and cold hands. Headaches and tired feet. Restless and relentless. Since she was nine, she has been forced to work every day of the week in order to support her family and keep up appearances.

NIKOLAY is a wilting weed. He is soft skin and bulging blue veins. Warm arms and small chuckles. Indifference and improv. Since he was nine, it was him and his mother. No one else to talk to, to be with, to laugh with. He loves all things but has zero things to love.

Lily, a girl with no time to love, and Niko, a boy with nothing to love.

An awful accident turns out to be a life-saving meeting.

But flowers and weeds aren't meant to mix.