BLOOM

breathe

dear future (me):

          i am here to tell you; as a friend, as a lover, as the person who has seen the rot singe the insides of your mouth. who has seen the ugly withered flowerets you keep hidden in your chest as a reminder that you once had  a garden full of flowers blooming. a reassurance, a consolidation that you had something. something alive and beautiful. i am here to tell you something before the ink dries up and the pages flitter with exhaustion.

           i am here to tell you that holding onto wilted petals will not make them any less dead. that covering the rot and ruin with heaps and heaps and heaps of sugar and honey will not make it any more sweet. i have seen with eyes that were once too rosy, tainted with candied apples and glacé cherries. i am here to tell you to breathe.

           i am here to tell you; as an admirer, that its okay to reach deep inside your rib cage and pluck the weeping petals one by one. i know i would. its okay to crush them and make them bleed so that you can paint your words with their colour and fill your insides with something more permanent. after all anything is better than the brief flitter of leaves that would tickle your throat and make you cough. perhaps i had mistaken it for a cough when really it was asphyxiation.  

          i am here to tell you that you will find yourself elbow deep in dirt and soil in hopes it will remove all the bad. and maybe it will for a while. but sometimes its not enough, and the roots you have expertly wedged in your spleen will have to be unrooted. even if it means to pry them off your clenched fingers. i am here to tell you that its okay if you dont have a garden full of flowers blooming from your lips. after all, how can they bloom when all that was left was the bitter remnants of spoilt milk and sour lavender?     

           to future (me),  if you are still reading; i would like to tell you that some things in life are allowed to expire. sometimes we dont have the capacity, the volume and sheer brute strength to cram a garden full of orchids into our ribcage. (they burst). sometimes we have to get over ourselves. i am here to tell you; like a mother scolding her child to not accept ice cream from a stranger;  that sometimes when you try, when you drink mouthfuls of water in hopes it will flourish whats inside, it will backfire. you will drown and so will the blossoms you carefully had planted.

           i am here to tell you that it doesn't matter. because it takes trial and error to balance the darkness and light and a small hiccup is nothing but a drizzle of rain that dries before the sun has the chance to kiss the sky.  i am here to tell you not to worry. to laugh along the way because (god forbid) you might forget to. i am here to tell you; as a friend, as a lover, as the person who continues to mistake sugar for salt, that i am still learning and growing and trying. and the seed i have planted in our heart (an everlasting flower) is the one that will never wilt.
      
         i love you.

yours remorsefully,
(past) me.