The Shades of Color

• Flowers •

I believe everyone that has existed and that ever will exist gets heavy sometimes. And no, I don't mean overweight or anything actually relating to weight. I mean it as an article of clothing on a clothes line that you find in the backyards of ones home.

Say each article of clothing, a shirt for example, is held up by clothes pins. The clothes pins represent the closest and most reliable friends the shirt has, assuming that the shirt is taking the role of a person. When the shirt gets wet, it droops down, and in this case the water is the equal of sadness. When people feel they are struggling, they begin to slip into a sadness that is indescribable. The shirt has been doused in water, and it is weighed down greatly. The clothes pins struggle immensely and one of the three gives out. The shirt is again doused in water, soaked and plundered with its own sadness as the first pin gives way. Suddenly, more weight has been added to the remaining clothes pins, and shortly after, they both give way.

The shirt lays on the ground, sopping with sadness.

This is the only way I can describe how I feel when I lay in bed alone at night.

Out of all the things the therapists taught me it's that the water cycle will happen quickly, I'll just have to believe in it. They tell me that evaporation happens quickly under the right circumstances and that I'm the only one who can change those circumstances. But I'm still soaking wet and my circumstances aren't right.

The air around me is too cold, to harsh, to bitter as it files in and out of my lungs. They told me my sadness would evaporate like water but the air around me is too cold and I'm freezing from the inside out. My lungs seize up, my heart stops, and the tears that had welled in my eyes are frozen crystal balls, casting ugly futures upon my cheeks. My lips turn blue, never to be touched again but by the hands of a mortician who sews them shut into a pretty smile for an open casket. My legs are curled into my chest as a sign of trying to fight the cold, to keep the small portion of heat my body had alive. But all fires must extinguish, and the ice ate its way through the flame.

Ice filled every opening, every small indention, every wrinkle on my body and weighed me down, and I was the heaviest I'd ever been. And as my hope slowly froze over, a subtle, discreet breath fanned across the ice on what had been my cheek...

Then another, on my forehead.

Then once more, on my lips.

And then, warmth.

On my hand, delicate flowers pushed from the ice and wilted. They encircled my fingers, brown, ugly, dead. They careened back and forth from the icy winds and curses that tried to disintegrate them. They bound up my arm, and across my collarbones that jutted out, begging to escape the skin that encompassed them. But still I felt warmth on my hand, even as the ugly, wilted flowers peered out from the ice around me warily. Before long my body was covered in the dark remains of a once colorful being, and yet there was still warmth on my hand. And ever so slowly, a hot, rigid breath accompanied my lips.

The ugly flowers began blooming.

Red.

Blue.

Purple.

Yellow.

Orange.

Pink.

White. Bright, blinding white. It was your smile.

Warm, inviting brown. That was your eyes.

Soft, delicate pink. It was your lips.

And it was then I realized I was covered in flowers. They sprouted from my body everywhere, save my neck up. As I looked at my hand to find the warmth, I saw your hand. And I swear in that moment, I knew I was in love