I look down to find two poppies in my weary hands.
One has been resting in my grasp for two years; its imprint shallow yet enduring.
It’s an odd feeling, holding onto this flower that I’ve only seen a set number of times. I can’t recall endless visits to the soil where it resided, and I can’t recall the manner in which it grew. I’m left with gaps in my memory and wonderings in my mind.
When I see it, I’m left with this apathy that leads to guilt and this emptiness that leads to regret.
Yet, I have to observe it. At least once a day, I need to examine each leaf and preserve each petal because it’d be wrong not to. I may only know a part of its life, but that doesn’t mean I’m allowed to let it go.
This poppy lives on in stories and jokes and reminiscence. Reminders everywhere and a legacy I know nothing about. And for a while, it lived on through the other poppy I now carry.
I spent a week in July with the second poppy. It was bright red and thriving and growing with elegance. We laughed in accord, and everything was what I thought it would be and more.
I think that’s why I haven’t mourned. This poppy will forever be frozen in time as perfectly fine, chatting at dinner and driving on cobblestone roads and hugging goodbye.
August brings murmurs and concern to the surface. I don’t want to burden anyone by asking, so I let it go.
Then, it starts wilting. It remains in the back of my mind; I don’t feel but I remember. I selfishly cry about everything in my life while the poppy’s slips away entirely.
I could feel it in every room I walked into—the impending aura of suffering, guilting me whenever I forgot.
Eventually, I let myself experience joy again for the first time in a while, and when I returned, the weight of this second flower had fallen upon me.
Now, I hold them both, reflecting, reminiscing, and wondering what to do. They claim there’s no incorrect way to mourn, but I’m simultaneously certain I’m grieving wrong.
In my garden, one symbolic poppy has just bloomed. It will eternally grow, watered with tears and sunlit by golden rays of remembrance.
