Prendendo Fiori

Your headstone reminds me more a pothole than a monument. It's an annoyance, not a commemoration. The slate of its being is obscured by wet, adhesive leaves; leaves that conceal the name and the dates, veiling an identity. Where there once was joviality, is now despondency. The flowers that someone left have wilted and died, lying dormant, taking up space, obstructing the singular green plain with their lurid yellow tint — much like you. I fear that the place you once held in the deepest confine of me has outlived its potential. I fear that you are no longer someone I abhor but someone I lament. When I look down at your negligible little slate, I see not you but the dying flowers surrounding it, stripped of their colour, stripped of their vitality. The red silk ribbon that once held them together has unraveled — much like you had. Sometimes I wonder if someone's ever going to fix up this mess — the buds are discarded in the grass and the ribbon is sprawled like two flailing branches buffeted by the wind — but I don't think anyone ever will. Nobody ever fixed you up, either.

As it slips through decrepit trees and swinging ornaments, the wind howls its malady. Sometimes I think it's you. It sounds a lot like your voice — quick, gentle, whirring. But the wind is suspended, and you didn't talk much. Sometimes I wonder how different things would be if you would have talked.

There's an older woman bent over beside me, huddling above the next grave over. She has a grey face and furrowed brows — much like your disposition. The slate she laments has a flag beside it, boasting the colours of unity and pride — something you never felt. The white is the hue of your skin; the blue, the entrancing tone of your eyes — and the red, is the blood I found you in.

In the midst of her mourning, she turns to me. "Are you going to clean that up?" She's pointing to the flowers, but at first I think she's pointing to you.

"No, ma'am," I tell her. I don't want to move the flowers. I like them right where they are.

She comes close to me, whines about how useless the youth of today are. I remember you saying something like that to me once before.

She takes the yellow buds into her hands, holds them by their slender stems and cradles them in her trembling arms. And then she leaves.

When she leaves, she takes you with her.