used to you [mylee] [day 4]

used to you [mylee] [day 4] Mar 27, 2022 10:04:54 GMT -5

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Post by heather - d2 [mylee] on Mar 27, 2022 10:04:54 GMT -5

I S A B E L L A

[ Isaac sits down beside her, slipping his feet into the water she’s already let creep to her shins. She hears his question, if you get out of here, Izzy, what is the first thing you are going to do? And she doesn’t know how to tell him she hasn’t thought of it. She wants to tell him that it hasn’t crossed her mind, but how to admit your faults like that—pierced and clear? ]

We had a funeral for my father, though we knew he wasn’t dead. We saw him on the corners of Five; I ran into him at the market. It’d been some day at the start of spring then, and I’d walked up to him with my arms full of produce—radishes and peas, strawberries so ripe they’d bled my hands red—and set my basket down at his feet. From it, I pulled the bouquet of hyacinths and peonies my mother had asked me for. She wanted something to make the house feel alive, she’d said, and this was the only way she could imagine to do it.

I’d stood beside him until he’d noticed me, and then, after a quick scan for my mother, he kneeled down so that we would look each other in the eyes. This was the only time I saw how bright the green in them burned. I handed him the bundle of flowers, those white peonies and purple hyacinths, pink stragglers interspersed. He hesitated to take the bundle of stems from me, but eventually his heavy, calloused hand wrapped around mine in the exchange. He’d given me a quick smile, a thank you that one might give to a stranger that they think might be familiar but decide is not, and as he'd turned to leave I’d said, they’re to make you feel alive. That’s all I’d known flowers were meant to do, and this was knowledge newly acquired, meant only for the specific task at hand, no straying, no turn from the path.

My mother had sent me back to the market, and I’d lied and said I blew the extra money on a piece of cake I had scarfed down greedily on the corner before returning home, though my stomach rumbled heavy and angry as I said it. I don’t know what she knew, but she palmed more coins to my hand and pushed me back out the door, said, Flowers, Isabella. You need to go find flowers.

I found them, a bundle seemingly identical to the ones I’d handed to the man in the market, and I brought them home and we laid them on top of fresh dirt covering an empty box we’d buried in the back yard. And seeing them there, I could believe the man whose hand had wrapped mine could be in there, though my mother had made me finish driving the nails into the wood and they rang hollow, even though I smashed my thumb on the second one and it pulsed red and mean for hours.

I watched from the kitchen window all spring, the hyacinths withering until my mother would go out and buy a new bouquet to replace the dying flowers before they could truly die, and it went on like this forever. She never stopped mourning, even in winter; she never stopped trying to make him more alive to us.

[ Izzy looks at Isaac, their feet dangling in the water and sending small, quiet ripples to the far edges. When she speaks, she’s looking at the foliage around them, searching for flashes of white and purple, pink in the in between. Isaac, we know I won’t make it out of here. He seems apt to say something then, to tell her she’s wrong, but she lifts her hand to stop him, says, I know how you all see me—daydreaming, not really here. I don’t want to die here; I want to go out when I’m somewhere as far from here as possible. ]

When I’m there, please, let someone take the hint. I can’t keep trying to make myself feel alive forever.

[ table: pogue ]