You don’t know why you go back to water the browning marigolds. They are long expired, and the winter they face will only blacken them further. They are and have been dead, and you know that, but still you come to them and tend to them as if their petals were downy soft.
“They’ll grow back.” You say to your well-meaning father, “If I take good enough care of them.”
There’s pity in his eyes as he watches you, but if you notice, you ignore it. You are too focused on the task at hand. Your fingers dig in the cold dirt, and you wince from the feeling of grit under your fingernails.
The months go by, but the marigolds do not bloom. Their petals blacken and fall off and you gather those petals and keep them between the pages of your favorite book, the one you keep by our bed. The room soon fills with the scent of their rot.
Marigolds weren’t your flowers, but someone else’s. You’ve always preferred white lilies, but when your love told you he preferred marigolds, you planted them all around the edges of the place you called home.
“There’s nothing left there.” Your father says when he next sees you.
“There are sprouts.” He looks at you as though he is mourning your loss. “Look closer. There are sprouts there.”
You resolve to water the marigolds more often.
You keep the petals until they are little more than dust and nothing blooms to take their place. Still, you dig into the dirt with indigo stains under your eyes and breaths that fog before they hit the air. You go to bed at night with bruised knuckles and sore fingers and remember that someone once laid beside you and kissed each little joint of your pinky; once held your hand when you had trouble sleeping. Now your hands are empty, save for the earth you hold in them.
Eventually, you stop going inside. You curl your body around dry stems and try not to choke on the memory of their sour scent. Your father stops coming by, and you cannot find it in yourself to miss him. The marigolds have bewitched you, poisoned you.
You do not leave them, not to feed yourself, not to wash yourself, not at all. Even as the last of the sunny petals turn limp, you do not leave to fetch them water or richer soil. You watch, humming a tune in the back of your throat as your eyes fall half shut.
Just like petals droop you are weakened, but although you haven’t fed yourself you survive.
“It isn’t fair,” you say. Somehow, the inside of your mouth tastes like stale rainwater. “I did all I could but they died anyway. How am I supposed to accept it? I can't.”
The flowers weren’t yours, but it was true that you’d grown to love them for their color and their unique scent. You’d loved them, but still they died. You’d never cried for flowers before.
“You knew what I was planning to do didn’t you? You knew I meant to die here,” you say, your long hair covering you like a blanket. “You promised me once that you’d never doubt the choices I make for myself. To break a promise like that…” You reach out to one of the weeds that grew around you and pull it from the dirt, wincing when stem tears from root with a pop.
“That isn’t like you, Elliot.”
You cannot see me smile, but the expression on your face warms anyway. It’s an unconscious reaction to the one you love.
I will not apologize for keeping you alive, but I am sorry I couldn't save your flowers. It wasn’t your fault the rest of my marigolds died, really, you took such good care of them. It was just the weather. Just too cold. Sometimes, these things happen no matter how hard you’ve worked to stop it. Sometimes, the world doesn’t give us any warning.
Do you really want the marigolds back? Or was it me you were looking for? I’m not in those flowers, and no matter how deep you dig, you won’t find me in the dirt. If I really thought you wanted marigolds, I’d grow you some. They’d be the brightest flowers you’d ever seen, and I’d make it so they wouldn’t need water or food. They’d survive off of your smile.
The day I died you promised I could have anything in the world, and now I know what I want. My wish is for you to plant white lilies over the marigolds. Treat them kindly, as you used to treat yourself, let them grow, and grow along with them. I won’t be there to keep them strong anymore; they’ll be yours and yours alone. But be kind to your hands as you’re planting. Flowers cannot bloom from pain.
And me? I’ll keep you warm where you lay until you’re strong enough to get back up.
