Sunflower

It was bright. Too bright. Everything felt unusually warm and brown, heavy and thick, the grass swayed and the trees bent. She could see her hiding beneath the branches of a eucalyptus tree. The bark littering the ground swallowed up her legs in jagged lines, the grass was sticking to the bottom of my shoes as I approached. I wanted to flash forward to another day. Any day other than this. Maybe one in the future. I could see yards of taffeta, lace and silk, sunflowers snuck into a delicate bouquet. I wondered what I would give to see that day when it came. How sad it would make me feel to miss it. Because I know now what I wouldn’t give to see it. The ground crunched under our feet as she moved to the shade of a seat covered in peeling blue paint. I could see the wood, raw and broken beneath it. I picked away it desperately, trying to find the centre, some part untouched by weathering as she spoke.

“You hurt me when you…” It reached me from a distance, as if she had yelled it from far away. The sunlight beat down harder on the back of my neck, it burned desperately, pressing me deeper into the earth.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered half-heartedly, my mind now off somewhere else. I was gathering together fistfuls of moments to throw back in her face. I could remember tasting woodfire smoke in the back of my throat as I cowered under the covers, waiting. I could remember trembling behind the wheel of a car, as cold sea air brushed over my face. I could almost hear my stomach audibly drop as she mentioned his name as we rushed down the dark road. All these moments washed like cold water down my spine. I shivered, but she noticed none of this. I wanted to scream at her, but instead she started to cry. All the air was sucked out of me, no heat, no cold, only sadness as I grabbed onto her, my life raft in a raging sea. “I’ve been a terrible friend…” it was only a whisper. Her voice swallowed up against my shoulder. What could I say in this moment? I felt I was standing on the edge of a precipice looking down at a life without her. I knew that I had to jump into it, but I wanted to hold on, just a little longer. I had some hope left, something that told me she’d hold onto me too. That she wouldn’t let me go so easily, without a fight, without trying everything she could.

But as she pulled away, her face turned down.

“I think it’ll be too hard…” I swallowed back the lump of fear. I could see the awkwardness in the set of her shoulders as her feet shuffled in the dirt. I didn’t have to hear anymore. The wind felt sticky and thick. I didn’t want to hear anymore. She had let me go already.