Rise of the Flowers

She let him snatch her heart from her sleeve

Offered him to sip the sugar that coursed her veins

Asked the sunshine in her soul to burn a hole so she could share the glorious warmth with him

He caged the butterflies that flew from her mouth

Seized the stars that twinkled feverishly within her eyes

She even let him whiff the saccharine aroma of the flowers that dappled her hair, which was the rarest of honors

She entrusted him with this precious cargo as followed him out of her beloved Garden of which she had never left

He lead her on into a rugged, savage landscape

With jagged rocks ever step that sliced into her barefeet

Leaving a trail of blood and flesh behind her, but the sweet spirit followed on despite the biting pain

A terrain plunged into the darkness of an infinite eclipse

And existed in a harsh, relentless eternal winter

Dazed and disoriented in this brutal, foriegn land, she called out to him

Only to be answered by an echo

She called out again and again

Vicious, wicked echos taunting her

She cried out until her voice met its demise and her throat wept blood

But the echos seemed to have found joy in her suffering and continued to haunt her long after her voice had faltered

Had he left her any of her precious cargo before his desertion?

But in the darkness she found nothing but

A singed hole in her soul where her sunshine had escaped

A distant, discolored patch on her sleeve

Thin, bitter blood trudging slowly through her veins

A nest in her mouth housing now solely memories of the joyous beating of wings

And a pair of blindly decieved eyes robbed of their light

She raised her trembling hands to the crown of her head

Expecting to feel the familar soft, silk of petals

She did not

He had taken her flowers with him, stolen them away from their home in her hair when she was not looking

She cried out and fell into the darkness with nothing to distinguish her from it

She lost track of the days as she mourned him and her stolen flowers

She wallowed and aquainted her shattered spirit with this newfound gloom

Not caring to put forth the effort to accept that the loss of her flowers was her own fault for following a stranger who spoke sage words out of her Garden

But after some span of time, she heard a cry of hope from somewhere within her broken body

She ignored it for she thought it a pathetic, naiive cry for him

The cry proved to be incessiant and demanded to be heard

It burned holes into her ears as she tried to ignore it

And with no strength or will left to ignore the ceaseless cry any longer she let it run rampid through her ears

And curiously enough it was not a cry for him but for the girl he took with him

The cry's origin was her cherished Garden, for they had missed their flower child terribly

'I am not the girl you seek' she tried desperatly to tell them

But they quickly dismissed her pleas 

Could they not see this shell lying crippled and weak in the darkness is not the same creature that ran about the Garden with light in her eyes and flowers in her hair?

Tears poured from her sunken sockets

For she missed that girl too

'But how will I ever find her again without finding him?' she cried out to the sun from the eternally eclipsed land

Her old friend did not answer her inquiry

And only told her to step into the light where she once used to flourish

But she could not disappoint her former home

To sicken them with what she had become

Her Garden though, was only sick of waiting for their Daughter to return

A gentle breeze swept through the darkness and lifted her frail frame into its folds

The breeze deposited the delicate girl into a flower bed in which she had slept in for most of her existance

Her old friend smiled down, warming the weak, blue body

Her dear weeping willow, whom she had laid under everyday for years laughing as its sweeping leaves tickled her nose, streched its limbs to shade her now translucent, thin skin

The birds, whom she sang alongside to the coming dawn every morning, sang softly and soothed her ears that the torturess silence of the dark had deafened

The blooms, she had admired but never picked, poured their nectar down her bloody, cracked throat

She tilted her eyes skyward up to her old friend, but having been acustomed to the dark, they burned 

But the clouds soon came to her rescue

And for the first time since the loss of her flowers she smiled

A breeze smelling of the River swept past her

She scrambled up onto unsteady, crippled legs but the breeze rushed to her aid and held her upright

She stumbled as fast as she could to reach the River that had raised her and taught her to always look around the riverbend at all costs

And the farther she walked and the closer she came to her beloved River, the stronger her legs baecame and the less blood was left in her tracks

Until she was running and rolling through grassy fields with her old friend soaking into her skin as it once did

She laughed blissfully as a butterfly tickled the crown of her head

Until she realized he was in search of her flowers

With that realization, the sunshine she had just begun to harbor in her soul once again slipped out yet again

She trudged on with her head down until she found herself at the river's edge

The wise river whispered 'My sweet, sunny Daughter, why have you let me run past you and no longer through you?'

'Not much left to run through' she whispered back sallowing tears

The river laughed and the breeze gently tugged her forward until she was leaning over the River's edge gazing not into the bottom of the River but into a pair of eyes with stars dappling them

She gasped

The river's surface held a girl with her heart on her sleeve and

Flowers in her hair

With hues more pungent than ever

'The darkness can be a trickster, love' said the River sagely

'My flowers... they're back' she said bewildered

'Dear, they never left'