Grand pomegranates were the drops of blood,
pitter-pattering onto the swirls of the marble floor.
They sounded like the June’s rain showers, soft and comforting,
pool at the bottom of your feet like seeds of Hades’ pomegranate trees.
Saccharine marmalade jams were the juices and piths of your oranges,
sweet and tangy, wild and free.
They tasted like the love of fall, the love of sharing,
sticky with the warmth of marmalade jam, the glass jar shattered on the floor.
Glistening daffodils were your wide, gleaming smiles,
laughing at me after my tumble down the stairs.
They looked like the perfect field of stars I could get lost in,
only for me to end up losing myself at your grave, buried between stalks of daffodils.
Climbing hydrangeas were your babies,
decorating your sweeping ivory balcony.
They smelled like the ichor of life, trailing and creeping behind you,
planted by your little green thumb, all wilted and shriveled up now.
Aquamarine skies were your glassy eyes, embalmed,
forever resting in their glimmering glory.
They seemed like the bluest haze, gray clouds shifting with the sky,
I thought, watching your gaze follow a falling cobalt blue bird above the rolling waves.
Pointed amethysts were the crystals replacing your frozen heart,
sank down between your rose quartz lungs and white quartz ribs.
They sounded like breaking glass, shards pierced your skin from beneath,
but only I saw them, tiny crystal spikes poking through your skin—amethyst clusters.
Charred chestnuts were your favorite little snacks
burning, forgotten over the crackling hearth of the fireplace as we chattered away.
They tasted like battery acid, burning through my esophagus,
and silently followed by bile climbing up, as I took a bite of your blackened chestnuts.
Burnt coal was all that was left,
lying beneath your lingering smirks and deafening guffaws.
They looked like the inside of your mind, burnt and dead,
although I tried, those scorched coal pieces never felt like rekindling again.
Tonight,
I sob away at the stars,
lying in a field of daffodils,
with an empty seat for you.
Between you and I stand
a dying, coal fire surrounded by stones,
a bouquet of climbing hydrangeas from your garden.
a pail of chestnuts roasting on waning embers,
a handful of pomegranates from Persephone’s tree,
and a jar of marmalade pried from your motionless, cold fingers.
Tonight,
I look to the blurry midnight skies.
And while I realized your distance long ago,
every night,
those jagged amethyst heavens seem so close.
Cynthia Cai is a Junior in high school from Houston, Texas. She has lived there all her life but has traveled to more countries than she can count on both her fingers and her toes. She loves the food in Houston, especially Tex-Mex, Thai, and Indian food. In her free time, you can find Cynthia reading a good high fantasy or science fiction novel, as well as sketching or painting. She has several golden and silver keys from Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. She was published last year in Hunted, an anthology of micro-fiction stories; her work is also forthcoming in a similar anthology, Trapped.
"Daffodils" by Mohammadali is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
