**This is fictional non fiction** CW: abuse
The cherry blossoms will be out soon. They make such a pretty halo over the sidewalks and city causeway. I don’t especially like the mess they leave afterward. But such is nature. The beauty might be fleeting, a supernova event that burns out for another day. The beauty fades and the reality of life is left.
I think of that cycle often. How I loved you like a supernova. Incandescent with love. I was so eager to please you. So rapt in your attention web. I couldn’t imagine any time where we didn’t make our own sun. Love is like that. It makes you drunk. Healthy love. Unhealthy love. There’s a high associated with chasing it, receiving it, exchanging it. How could you ever look away from it?
You’d whisper sweet nothings to me and make me get on my knees. I was so eager to please. All I craved was to turn those notes into bliss. I wanted to bloom. But I didn’t get what I needed. I didn’t get the actions of someone so full of love they’d show me. And so began our seasons.
There was little preamble to our togetherness. I was summoned and I always went. I chased that sun. I so wanted to feel it on my skin. I ached for it. I wanted all of you so much. So, I blamed myself. The first time your face contorted like a storm and you felled me.
I blamed myself.
I was wrong. All of me was wrong. My clothes. My job. My friends. My body. My words. We were wrong. Didn’t I understand? Couldn’t I see what he saw? All the improvements I could make. I just had to want them. Try harder. I had to be like the cherry blossom. I had to get ugly and bloom again. I’d get used to it.
I blamed myself.
Each season the cherry blossoms came and went. I could see how happy they made everyone. I would pick the low-lying ones. Rub their fragrant petals between my fingers like vellum. I loved to watch them disintegrate. They gave me hope something could grow so beautifully. Wherever it was planted. Maybe I could grow to be beautiful amongst the roots.
I worshipped you. I did. Your needs came first. Your moods accommodated. Your schedule adhered to. I got used to cancelling. To say no thank you, you had to work. Maybe another time. Maybe we could just go on our own. None of the maybe ever came to be. I didn’t grow. I’d disappeared. Our seasons stunted.
I blamed myself.
I learned to live between seasons. Dormant. I made myself small. Invisible to anyone casting a gaze. I didn’t want to see you storm. It broke my will. It broke my heart. Sometimes it broke pieces of me. Those were harder to hide. I didn’t know when to expect them. I could never gauge the wind.
When once you left me at a corner, alone in the dark, I slouched against a tree. Protected by its sturdiness. I had been bad, circumstance had made you worse. Didn’t anyone see what they were making you be? Didn’t I understand the pain? The tree groaned and I dusted off home. You weren’t there. I listened to the baby cry.
I blamed myself.
I want to bloom. I want to flower. My allergies will soon appear. Reminding me of the potential and renewal. A new beginning. Like the first time, you’ll hear the ice cream man’s truck. The music keyed into your memory signals joy. I want that feeling to grow.
You stormed a day it snowed. You wouldn’t come to get me. I needed you. But in the end, I did what I wanted to do alone. It made me so tired to look at you. Why wasn’t I a flower in your gaze? Why didn’t you want to let me reach higher? I was always going to feel this way even when the sun came out.
The cherry blossoms will be out soon. They’ll shadow coves made for lovers. They’ll carpet walkways like we’re royalty. I don’t look up into the plush bouquets anymore and wonder why not me. I know now I have yet to flower, it isn’t quite my season. But I grow more each day and bask tending to my own garden.
I think of you less. I loved you so much. But we reap what we sow and I thank you for that. When I burst into my spring, when I inspire awe and fragrant bouquets, and that occasion will come, my upturned face will gaze into the sun of all seasons and no longer blame myself.
K/ x
Gingerly 