In each unplowed, untamed, unbridled field I run through, I find a flower.
I glance around with internalized guilt coursing through my ivy-covered veins, and I pick it.
I steal it, and my frolicking turns into sprinting as my solitude follows closely behind in my shadow, only catching up to me when I stop. Because I’m alone, and there’s nobody to run from.
This is nobody’s field—there’s nobody to steal from. So, why has my delicate, dainty disposition turned sinful?
This is not a story about my delinquency, so I’ll spare you the details.
Now I’m holding a flower, a different variety each time, and debating what I should do next.
I could take a photo of the flower, but it’d probably get lost in a gallery. Stranded alone in the sea of “masterpieces” and “artworks,” its green stem would turn greener with envy.
That’s why I press my flowers, unwilling to let them wilt, demuring to let them die, refusing to let them go.
I could put it in a vase, but it would probably wilt; it would definitely wilt.
I could press it, put it in a frame, and hold it close to my prolific heart, but—well, I suppose that could work.
The bud is so beautiful. It only just reached its prime. It will never look as beautiful again, and for that, it’s resented.
I take the precious flower and set it down, laying it flat, recommending it say good riddance to the wicked curse of its ripe allure. “I’ll love you all the same,” I exclaim, as I close the weighted, unwieldy book, ready to wait.
And I return, weeks gone past, to find it flattened.
Prepared to be preserved, prepared to be kept for eternity, prepared to be loved, prepared to be reminiscenced on.
Prepared for the petals, more fragile than ever, to hold the weight of my past in their creases.
Each flower bears the memory of a different field, of a different time, of a different life.
Each flower holds a piece of myself that I lost in life’s oscillation.
A piece of myself that I want back because I didn’t realize how desperately I needed it until the bleeding started.
I have to move on.
That’s why I press my flowers, unwilling to let them wilt, demuring to let them die, refusing to let them go.
Killing their life but saving my own.
When my memory fades, my flowers will live on; I know the immortality of my words won’t change the way it ends.
But maybe, just maybe, they’ll make it a little easier to leave.
