Dandelions is a short oneshot I wrote one valentines day. Please, tell me what you think- Wren.
It's funny, the way the sun shatters in the evening. It's hanging low in the sky, and I swear it knows what's coming, because it's glowing brighter than it ever did at midday. And it hits the slatted wood fence, the tree branches, and it spills in little dappling spots all over the grass. I'm far taller here- or at least my shadow is, stretching all the way to the wilted rosebushes. I suppose I should have watered them, but I've been forgetting nowadays, and their red is all dark like a bruise. Like the shadows on the lawn. And maybe I'll go around the back to get a watering can, and save them from a dry summer death. But not now, because I'm busy picking off the armada of dandelions, one by one, and blowing their little white seeds into the wind. We've done it together before, you and I, do you remember? The sun was low, just like this, and I wore the same dress I'm wearing now, red as the roses. Of course, they were thriving back then, because you would water them whenever you came over. We were talking about anything and everything, and laughing at things that, in hindsight, weren't even that extraordinary. I only remember a few snatches of the words- somehow, they don't seem so important as your face did as you said them, or the way your eyes burned and glowed to rival the sun. But perhaps glowed is the wrong word, because your eyes were never as dark as they were that day. Rather, they glowed with an inverse light. A sort of vivid intensifying to a black deeper than the crevice in the fresh asphalt of the road outside. You'd know it well, you walked me home on it every day. On some days, it was sliced over with silver when the fat drops of rain smashed onto its surface. When that happened, you'd keep close and watch guardedly as I laughed, face up, into the bruised sky. You told me I was crazy once, told me normal people didn't like getting so wet. Then I'd laugh even harder and tell you you were just as mad, for loving a lunatic. And you'd laugh along, nudging me every so often to keep me off the road. Your voice sounded like the rainwater flooding through the storm-drain grating, liquid and quick. We followed the drain once, do you remember? All the way down to the brown-stained river, where not even the ducks can swim because it's so choked up with plastic. You followed me there another time too, when I'd left quivering footprints in the filth. I recall the outline of your hand, a five-pointed star of warmth that seeped through my sodden pyjamas to the curl of my back. I couldn't look at you then, only at the wet mud seeping up between my toes as I sobbed and told you I'd been forgotten again. But you never forgot me, not once. Not even then, when the dirt soaked so deep into your new coat that you could never quite get it out. Nor that day when the sun squeezed itself in little patched through the fence. After a while, I noticed you had stopped picking dandelions. You were just watching me with those intense eyes, laughing along with me through them. I asked you why, and you said- do you remember?- you said it was because you had nothing left to wish for. No, I know you remember. You still remember me, wherever you are, because I remember you. I even remember the day your eyes lost their deep darkness, and your hands lost their warmth. You lay so still, in amongst a bunch of fresh red roses. But then they shut the wooden lid, poured dirt over you, and I couldn't see you anymore.
I know you remember me, though. Even on days like this, when I feel like the dandelions I scatter into the wind. Like I'm just a thin stalk, with white dreams tethered to my head. And every so often they get blown away. But I'll keep wishing, because one of these thousand goddamned dandelions has to make it come true.