Forget-You-Not

I love you so much but Death loves you more. 

Death loves you but Time loves me. 

Why else would everything be frozen, if not for Time’s sorrow and pity?

Time’s gift is an opportunity to weep without fear of judgment, but I don’t take it.

It isn’t for a lack of trying, of course. I squeeze and squeeze the rag in my mind holding my tears until my fingers ache. 

Maybe sometimes grief isn’t loud or sharp. Maybe sometimes it’s cold, so cold. It coats your heart in an emotionally numbing layer of frost, protecting it until it can beat again.

I clutch the flower in my hand until it’s all but mush, its carcass as lifeless as your own. 

A Forget-Me-Not.

I go to the pond you took me to that one night. The waters are still like everything else. A duck has a portion of its beak in the water like a branch jutting from the world’s largest jewel. A horsetail reed is stuck mid-sway while its companions stand tall and proud with their black and beige tattoos. A water lettuce leaf is suspended an inch above the surface like a jade statue. It looks exactly the same as when we left it.

I was visibly irritated that night. About what, I don’t recall. All I know is that it was too trivial to justify how I snapped at you. Forever the saint, you simply took my hand and gently tugged me here. 

“This is where I go when I need something to drain the excess anger and sorrow out of me. As far as I know, no one else knows about this place but me,” you said. 

“Is it really okay for me to be here? This is your secret.”

“Then it can be ours.”

You took my hand once more and placed something in it. Flowers. They weren’t quite blue, but they weren’t quite purple either. They had five petals and turmeric centers with white lines, each individually embroidered with care. You find a bunch with their petals turned over in a half dome, like an umbrella. 

“These are forget-me-nots. They’re my favorite flower,” you said as you tucked it behind my ear. 

“They mean true love and respect. When you give them to someone, it’s a promise you will always keep them in your thoughts. Like a lover’s goodbye to someone you don’t truly want to leave,” you said. 

I hope you never leave me behind, I didn’t say. 

The blood rushed to my face in shame. I vowed to never lose my temper again and treat you the way you deserve, for love is honey. It is not something that you just stumble upon, like summer rain or a stray kitten or a peaceful pond brimming with wilful wildlife. It is something that must be extracted from the flowers of life and cultivated with care until you have something you can cherish. 

The next day you were dead. Perhaps you knew you were meant to leave this world, as a forget-me-not was clutched in your fist, the same one I have turned to mush. 

Like a lover’s goodbye to someone you don’t truly want to leave.

It was a reminder to be true to my promises. To give you a permanent home in my thoughts, for Death ends life, not love. 

“What are we?” I asked you when we were younger.

“We found a family in each other,” you replied. 

You were wrong. This bond is stronger than family. It isn’t something you need to hold carefully while walking as slow as possible. It’s stronger than diamonds and even more priceless.

I walk along the shore until my head brushes against a butterfly that was interrupted on its way to the pickerels. Despite its typical delicacy, it doesn’t budge. Time’s gift turns it hard as chrysoberyl. I stomp on the nearby creeping jennys, but they don’t stay down. They spring back up like a warm pillow. I wonder why they weren’t turned into peridot structures like the butterfly was. Perhaps they don’t need Time’s gift. For all their beauty and fragility, flowers still grow back after being trampled by every creature imaginable, and so will I. 

You once took me to a small second hand bookstore tucked into a dark corner. You had a knack for finding places no one else knew about. You immediately introduced me to the owner who looked at you like you were their only child. We walked to the back of the store, and I stole a glance at you. You looked like you were finally home. All the tension you had accumulated that week slowly left you in glittering steam as your body relaxed. I wished for more moments like this with you than there are grains of sand in all the world’s beaches.

You turned to me as I quickly fumbled with a nearby book, cheeks warming with the embarrassment of being caught. My entire body became red as poppies as I realized what book I picked up, and you laughed. You looked over my shoulder and started reading aloud to mock me, but the vulgarity of the text dissipated into nothingness. I heard your voice as the sweet notes of lilacs and wisteria, and in that moment, I had all the love in the world to give.

Even after you disappeared, that feeling didn’t. Grief is all the love you want to give but cannot. It is love with no place to call home. 

You once asked me what love is, and I looked at the sun. Love is white light. It is all the different shades and colors of emotion condensed into an all-consuming fiery orb. 

You took me to a meadow for a picnic. We were the only ones there, as the sky was dark with thick, angry clouds. The wind cut through the grass like venomous snakes, but you looked the same as you did in that bookstore. 

You looked free.

“The flowers may look beautiful in the sun, but they can’t grow without harsh weather like this. Sitting here like this makes me feel like I undergo the same hardships as them and deserve to admire their beauty all the more,” you said.

You believed flowers bloom with suffering. I believe flowers bloom when you decide to share their seeds with somebody. 

Perhaps to emphasize your point, you pointed to a nearby daisy fighting against the wind with all its might despite its thin stem and loosely attached petals.

A flower is full of contradictions, I realized. Its delicate petals and overwhelming scent. Your delicate nature and overwhelming wisdom. Or perhaps it's not a contradiction at all. Perhaps the fragility of your petals is to accentuate the strength of your fragrance. 

You flopped onto your back and stared at the sky. 

“If you stare really hard with your eyes wide open, it kind of looks like the sky is raining iridescent glitter, right? Right?”

I followed your example and faced skyward. 

“I just see weird ugly squiggly things.”

“Mmh,” you hummed in response as your eyes closed and your mind drifted off into some mystical adventure you wouldn’t remember when they opened again. 

Perhaps I’m by your side fighting monsters and scaling impossible walls and riding dragons and saving kings. Or perhaps I’m helping you from the shadows, stealing supplies and giving advice in riddles you will only understand when all your plans have failed. 

Or perhaps I’m not there at all. That would be alright too. I hope you woke up disappointed when you couldn’t find me in your dreams. 

I hope you’re dreaming of me wherever you’re resting now. 

I turned on my side and gazed at you. You looked peaceful, too peaceful, and it scared me. Your body was daylilies against the daisy coffin around you, and I found myself wishing for you to wake up so I may watch the color return to your cheeks.

After you died, I wondered, “How will I ever make peace with the knowledge that you are gone?”

I realize now that I never will. But peace is not compulsory. Even in the most violent of wars people find ways to live. The very definition of life is the ability to grow or change, and change never comes with peace. It comes with dark, bloody holes left by those we loved. 

Little by little I will let go of this pain but never of you. This grief is just a testament to how precious you are to me.

I had known we would all die one day, but it was too soon for you to go.

The possibility seemed like a distant dream, a storybook ending far into the future. I thought I understood death. 

We never truly understand death until it lays its talons on and flies off with someone you cherish with all your being.

It’s almost funny, really. You’re the one who suffered from the tragedy, but I am the one suffering from you.

The dead aren’t the only victims of Death. It ends pain for those it takes and creates it for everyone else. 

My mindless wandering takes me to our forget-me-not garden, if it can be called one. It isn’t much, just a dwarfish curve near the lake. The arbitrary position looks like it was an accidental growth, a bridal veil dropped from the heavens. They would have been dead by now without your care, but you worked tirelessly to give rise to so much life. 

I realize that love is a gardener. It nurtures and nurtures until our flowers finally bloom out of our chests. 

Really, people are flowers, each one a miracle in their own way. The equally frightening and beautiful rose, the bountiful and brightening daisy, the bold and protective sunflower. Each flavor of human is a carefully crafted painting of nature, and if we could truly see even a single one, our entire world would change. Flowers are always lying in wait right in front of us for someone willing to nurture and admire it, for love is a dandelion. It is a weed that has the potential to hinder your growth and break your spirit or raise you to be the brightest sunflower surrounded by splashes of white and gold. Dandelions are nothing but hungry mouths growing rapidly through my ribs for a taste of the sun that is you, for where there are dandelions, there is love. 

I shall weep, for all tears are not poison. Some are alcohol, flammable and volatile and capable of mass destruction of the mind and body. But mine are the nourishing sea, harboring life of all shapes and sizes and telling the story of the million shards of my spirit.

With every tear, life and movement slowly return to the world. The birds continue to sing, people go about their lives, and you are still somewhere far, far away, where I can no longer touch you. 

I may have been left behind, but I am not truly alone. I belong to the most whole and broken family in this world. An invisible family of those who have suffered the same.

I will see you in every opening to the heavens. The flowers that persevere in growing taller than the thieving weeds, the valiant bees that fight to the death, every sunny winter day. They will all remind me of your handprints on the sandy exterior of my heart. 

May the memories of you give me the strength to face the days that lie ahead. 

Until we meet again.