My Little Sister

I asked Ark about his sister, I wasn’t sure if he was ready to go back through the pain but I had to try. I needed to know that it would be ok without Rose, I needed some kind of proof that life goes on. He told me the whole heart breaking story. It broke my heart just listening to the pain that he went through.

“When I was two years old my grandma gave me some seeds, so that I could grow some flowers. I found a small terracotta plant pot and put one of the little seeds in it. I buried the tiny seed in the soft soil, I gave it a gravestone like marker and I watered it every day; the water falling like tears from the watering can, tears that kept my seed alive, tears that kept the memories alive and the dead people that I remember, the tears kept them alive too. On occasions the head of the watering can fell off and I flooded the plant pot with a waterfall of water but the seed survived.

On the 9th January the bright green shoot began to peek out timidly of the surface of the soil; fragile and dainty, like a dandelion seed trying to float on the breeze but not be swallowed by it or a new-born baby trying to find its way in the strange new world in which it has arrived. The roots dug down deep into the heart of the plant pot. It was only a baby plant but I named it anyway, I called it Ella and I talked to it all the time and even though it couldn’t talk back; I knew that it was listening.

I watched it as it grew. I cared for it daily and thought about it all the time. Soon it blossomed and it was beautifully perfect. It smelt like sunset, waved in the wind like a dream and it stole my heart, my essence and it will pay for that by being locked up and jailed in my mind forever. It had delicate petals that were stained red with blood, with pink and blue pulsing through tiny veins. It’s stem propelling it upwards, hungry for sunlight.

One sunny afternoon, when the sun had come out to play, I left my window open to let the cool breeze and the calm sweet smell of summer into the chaos of the room. A butterfly with burning wings aflame with blue fire, streaked with purple ashes and green blood splatters visited my flower. It fluttered, glittering in the sunlight, around the petals as if they were engaged in a dance, waltzing along to the rhythm of the sun’s heartbeat and the harmony of the twinkling water floating in through the window. Butterflies have no more freedom than we do but we have longer to suffer.

It grew too big for the plant pot so I cut it and put it in a crystal vase on the windowsill so that it could watch the sun dying; with the sky drenched in blood and blue clouds staining the blood purple, only to be replaced but the shy glow of the pearl white moon and the laughing stars that shone so bright the world was illuminated with their brilliant light, a soft glow cast among the shadows of the night.

At this he started to cry, his voice broke but he kept talking, I guess it’s as hard to stop as is it to start and I felt a wave of compassion towards him. He was only two years old when this happened. When I was two I was still living with my grandma and I didn’t have parents but I did have a family, he lost his parents in the war along with mine and then he lost his sister. It’s ironic that the death of the people we love brings the living closer together.

The water I kept it in shimmered in the sunlight like a thousand diamonds flowing as a liquid, the glass glittering in time the hum of the bees and the tweeting of the birds fresh in the morning. I made sure that my flower always had water and I cared for it but it was beginning to wilt. It was crumpling with pain, wrinkling from old age and dying slowly, the dance was slowing into a funeral march and the music was sombre and dark, like a veil had come over the sun, a veil of darkness that chained the light and beckoned death.

I watched my flower die; the red washed out making the petals pale and stretched, becoming ghostly and transparent, the veins of pink and blue fading and pulsing weakly. The stem could barely hold its head up anymore and it had become thin, mottled and flimsy. On the 8th August my flower finally died, after weeks of pain and suffering it reached the end, the grand finale that was only the beginning of the next big adventure.

It wrenched my heart against the cage that I keep it locked in like a desperate prisoner rattling the bars in a useless attempt to escape. I was hit by a wave of darkness; of sadness the light was gone. If the darkness is only here to make us stronger then why does it hurt so much? The darkness is poisoning my soul and soon I will waste away, become one with the dark. I’m desperately flailing to find the light, but I’ve been locked out of heaven.

It will live on in my heart, locked in internal youth, forever and always because the people you love become ghosts inside you and that’s how they stay alive. I love Ella and nothing not even death will change the words that in my mind are engraved into the stone of my heart. For life is like a good story, something is bad, something is good and something has to die. No one lives forever and every day we live is a day closer to the day we die but I will love Ella until death do us part, and then some because little does she know I will love her until the sun dies.

I love her. I truly love her more than any amount of words can express. Distance makes the heart grow fonder and she’s as far away as humanly possible. As much as I love her, I hate her for leaving me. I miss her every day; I miss her so much it hurts. Just thinking about her makes me cry, makes me feel alone. She made my heart invincible because she broke it, shattered it until only shards of excruciating pain were left. She took a part of my heart with her, she stole it and for that I have jailed her in my mind forever. She didn’t choose to leave. I will never ever blame her. I would sell my soul for the sister that got away. She’s worth it, I can promise her that much.”

And that’s when I fell in love with him. He had been through so much pain and he still had room in his heart to love me. “I’m sorry” I said now that he had finished and I truly was. “Does it get better?” I asked and waited with baited breath. “Not for a while but yes, yes it does get better, you made it better…I think you just need to find the one person is willing to mend you heart.”

I fell asleep dreaming of a boy, a broken boy who had seen more hurt than anyone should and had been lying cracked in the corner for years, talking to himself. The boy in my dream smells like sunsets, walks like water and laughs like butterflies. If you want to know where home is look at where your heart goes when it wanders.