Flowers In The Meadow

    I always thought that when someone was kind to you, you were supposed to find out what they wanted from you.  As a kid, I learned very quickly to not accept every gift that was presented to me after the first few times of being slapped, raped, or laughed at for it.  Sooner or later you begin to just tune everyone and everything out of your life. You find a certain few that make it past the moat and castle walls built in your brain. No one made it up the tower of my mind-castle before her.


    She, the mirage of my fantasies that never quite seemed real, was a bartender at one of the many local bars in town.  In my town, bars are like Starbucks; there's one on almost every corner.  I was at one of these expensive shit-holes one night trying to drink my problems away, but the bouncer at the door wasn't responding to my batting green eyeshadowed lashes. It didn't really matter. I was already drunk enough to linger on alcohol poisoning. When she appeared in the doorway, her hair was caught by a light breeze that sent the aroma of her shampoo in my direction. "Flowers..." I muttered as everything went black. 
    When I awoke, it was still dark, and I again smelled flowers.  My eyelids fought to separate and let whatever light from the bar into my vision. Everything was blurry for a moment. I finally began to focus on a shadow hovering above me. "Ryan, get this kid a glass of water. She's waking up."  The haze cleared completely, and my mirage was smiling warily at me. "It's okay, honey. We have an ambulance on the way."
    "I smell flowers," I squeaked. She giggled. I sighed. And that was it. She was my soulmate.



    No, I never fucked her, nor did I have any sort of infatuation for her, beautiful as she was. She became my best friend, my confidante, my mentor.  After the bar incident, I saw her one day as I was on my way to my car after class.  She was a fellow student at the community college. She told me that she was trying to get a degree in psychology so that she could someday become a guidance counselor. I bargained that guidance counselors didn't make much money, but she said she was already poor so it didn't matter. She just wanted to help people. From there she became my personal therapist, or so it seemed. I began to talk to her about everything. I told her about my childhood, my exes, my fears, my hopes. I had never spoken to anyone so much in my life. I was happy for the first time in my life. Things were looking up for once. Then, she was taken away from me...