Flower

"May I be excused?" She said, finished with the food on her plate. Her father only glanced up from the book in his lap long enough to give her a brief nod.

Her father was always more absorbed in book plots and video game characters rather than his daughter. There was always something new to find in a book, but his daughter stayed the same. Always the same big brown eyes, the same thick, untamed auburn hair, the way her ligaments always seemed too long for the rest of her body.

When her father excused her from the dinner table she walked up the all too familiar stairs and made her way down the hallway leading to her bedroom. Paintings and frames lined the hallway, though they seemed out of place, almost. She turned the rusty doorknob when she reached her door and walked into her bedroom with ever-dusty grey walls. The floorboards whined with each step due to her heavy feet. Heaviness seemed to be a trend of hers. When she spoke, which wasn't often, it was with a heavy tone, when she slept she was a heavy sleeper. Sometimes, if she was unfortunate enough, her thoughts were so heavy it was difficult to hold her head up.

The walls surrounding her had so much to tell if they could talk, so much. If you asked the walls to tell, they'd ask where to begin. Where to start when the beginning seems so far away, the story has been in progress for so long. Do we begin with the selflessness or the selfishness? Which came first? Ask the walls, they'll tell all.

The shelves adorning the walls held books passed down from her father, empty vases, CD cases that no longer held the assigned CD. Not only did the shelves hold such material things, but things that were intangible. The shelves held memories that she no longer cared to store in her mind. The first nightmare, the latest regret. Such memories must be stored on the shelves because if they were stored in her mind, they would no doubt be in the forefront. Then, there was no way to make it through a day. But to forget these memories would be catastrophic. To forget the memories means that she learnt nothing from them. So she doesn't forget them or harbor them in her mind, but puts them at bay on the shelves on her bedroom walls.

 On one of her walls, the wall opposite the door, there was a window. The window was cracked and had plenty dust resting on the ledge. Nothing covered the window, but there was also no one to look in. The closest neighbor was half a mile away. As though it's a routine, she walked past her bed and past all the shelves straight to the window. She just stood in front of the window, not moving, not speaking, and just standing. Her eyes roamed the browned grass outside her window. It was the same scene as always, a sad and pathetic yard. Nothing ever adorned her yard, it stayed dying and tattered.

With the exception of today.

Today, when she looked out of her window, there was a small dandelion. A tiny, sprouting yellow flower amidst the pathetic grass was there.

She squinted her eyes at the flower, to see if it wasn't something she'd imagined. She stared at it, scrutinizing it. There shouldn't be a flower growing in her yard, she thought. There was no rain to water it, furthermore no sun to feed it. There was no one to nurture this flower, she thought, yet it was still sprouting.

Looking at this flower was not enough for her. Seeing the flower outside her window sparked an interest that had been untouched for a long while. An interest that she wanted to hold on to, she didn't want to let go of a feeling that was so rare, that was something so far away from the ritualistic mute feelings. 

As if to solidify that the growing flower was in fact real, she put on her beat up tennis shoes and threw on a jacket. She stepped down the stairs faster than normal, as if the flower might expire before she had the chance to pluck it.  Her father was still sitting at the dinner table with an untouched plate of food but a book in his lap. She didn't tell her father where she was going, though she doubted he'd even taken note of the front door opening.

After walking outside, the cold frisked her face as if to reprimand her for leaving her room. She ignored the cold though, unbothered.

She looked to her left, towards where her view is from her window, but she saw no flower. There wasn't a splash of yellow, no sproutling. She walked over to where the flower should have been, angrier than she'd expected she might be.

There was a flower in her pathetic yard, right outside her bedroom window. There was a flower that wasn't tall, wasn't big, or even pretty, but it had taught itself to bloom again through the winter. The flower persisted in its life cycle. Not only in its life cycle, but in her yard. In the pathetic yard that reminded her so much of herself, something was revived. 

Did it only exist in her room, but not where reality persists?

Though as she approached the familiar view she was accustomed to, she saw it.

The flower was still there.

All and any anger dissipated and was replaced with relief --relief that the life in her yard still existed. The girl fell to the ground on her knees next to the flower. There was nothing else to do other than stare. It was so beautiful, despite not being pretty. Despite being surrounded but such ugly, dying things. There was still life to be found in her yard.

What began as a spark of interest in her eyes turned into fire --fire that she wanted to play with.

The girl ripped the flower from the dirt and cradled it near her chest. She held it close, fighting the cold weather with a newly found warmth in her chest. She walked into the house, past her father, past past the stock photos and up the stairs and into the four walls that knew everything.

The walls watched her as she neared the shelves that held memories. As her eyes grazed the shelves she found what she was looking for.

The empty vase.

She put the flower in the vase and sat on her bed. The walls watched as she stared at the flower once again. It laid in a vase on a shelf of memories that should have drowned any beauty the flower held, but didn't. The flower held it's self nicely and stayed radiant. The girl smiled slightly for the first time in a long while.

If flowers could teach themselves to bloom after the winter, maybe, just maybe, she could bloom again herself.