Florescent

Ede Emmanuel, Nigeria

“What would happen if the world wasn’t so bad?” Daisy asked.

“That’s a utopia you imagine, Daisy, and we can only imagine what utopia would be like.” Her mother sighed heavily and turned to the receding sun, “I imagine finally, all would be at peace. I would welcome it.”

Daisy placed her hand in her mother’s and they stood there, watching the sun as it took a final bow—blushing so fiercely even the wind heated in embarrassment, and the skies coloured themselves rouge.

A gentle breeze blew through the lush, green meadow, causing the grass to wiggle and wave in excited, but hushed admiration, the susurration of their thanks carried on by the wind to places near and far.

As the eyes of the sun drooped to a close, a butterfly fluttered by, away from the peace and warmth of the meadow that would soon go cold and fled into the comfort of the trees that would house it and its kin.

The sun’s light winked out and the flowers in the field bowed—once—then the land exhaled.

Rest. At last.

* * *

The mind is capable of a great many accomplishments. All of them beginning, first, with thought.

* * *

“Do you think I am beautiful, mama?”

“Why do you ask that question, sweet flower?”

“I heard the girls talking yesterday. They were whispering—even though Rose’s voice was the loudest. She said she was beautiful because a man was coming to pick her up tomorrow.”

Daisy frowned and rubbed her hands together, then against her simple, white frock. “D-do you think I’m beautiful, mama?” she asked.

Her mother looked into wells of sparkling yellow eyes. So very like her father.

“Oh, Daisy,” she said, bowing her slender neck to Daisy’s head. Her kiss was light—fleeting and as sweet as pollen. “You shouldn’t worry about such things.

“You’re beautiful enough for me.”

“I-I know, but still...”

Her mother laughed, a light, melodic note that seemed to segue into words—every single note was a melody plucked out of the wind.

“I know the answer you want, but I am not here to give you the answers you want. I would be no different from Rose or Lily or Iris. That would mean that I could not tell you the truth, and the truth is always what we need. Come here.”

Daisy did not think her mother was right about the truth always being what was needed, but she let her mother wrap her long, warm hands around her and nuzzle her ear.

“You don’t need anyone to tell you that you’re beautiful. I’ll ask you my own question now, sweet flower.”

The buttery-sweet smell of pollen still hung in the air, and now Daisy could see the spores dancing in the very air before her eyes. They seemed to bend light around them—they were... pulling...

They looked like gold and sun-warmed honey melting before her eyes. It was beautiful. She heard her mother’s slow breathing in her ears and knew her mother was about to smile even before she did.

She turned around.

“Do you think you’re beautiful?”

Daisy paused and stared into her mother’s egg-yolk eyes. Kind, loving, warm, melting. She tilted her head back up to gaze at the pollen that were still swirling in the air. They seemed so free. So strong, yet soft. They looked beautiful.

They were beautiful.

Daisy’s eyes widened with a gasp and she heard her mother’s hearty laughter from across. Her mother’s eyes were shining. “You understand, now, don’t you?”

How could she know?

How could she have known?

“Yes!” Daisy breathed. It was almost a whisper. So soft. So powerful. It was knife and butter. It was leaf and raindrop. It was the answer, and she knew it. “Yes!” she said more confidently.

She felt something bubbling in her chest like oil. It was so easy. It was there. It had always been there.

Daisy felt like she could jump and kiss the stars right now. Like she could close her eyes and float with the wind to wherever it took her. Daisy wanted suddenly to hug her mother, and so she did. She leapt into her mother’s arms and held her tightly.

Her mother laughed, sending out peals of mellifluous sounds across the meadow.

“I am beautiful.” Daisy said and looked up with glistening eyes. “Not because I am a girl or a flower—not because a man is coming to pick me, and not because other people say I am.”

Oh, so this is it. This is what’s been bubbling inside me?

Euphoria.

“I am beautiful because I know that I am. Even when others do not often see it. Even when I do not see it. I am beautiful because my soul sings it to me—even when I do not feel like it. I am beautiful because I always was, and my soul knows this truth. I am beautiful

“You were right, mama. The truth is always what we need.”

Her mother pulled her into the warmth of her loving, green arms and laughed again, her head nestled on Daisy’s. “Oh, my beautiful girl... my sweet flower... you are beautiful.”

The teardrop that jumped from the cusp of her eye was a glistering ball. It kissed the ground in a shower of light.

* * *

Beauty is exaggerated—a blind man would appreciate it better because he has no use for it.

* * *

“How does one find the will to live?”

“You don’t... it finds you.”

* * *

Life happens... in the most unexpected of places...

* * *

“It hurts, it hurts so much. Why does it hurt like so, pa?”

“Change is an eventual thing.” Hyacinth said in a gravelly tone.

He knew Marigold could see him, but she could not see how he felt. What he felt. He would trade places with her in an instant if he could.

But he couldn’t.

She was in labour. Pregnancies are not handed out like bags of candy. They are not tossed around like pollen from the legs of the full bee.

A pregnancy is a journey. It is change. A pregnancy is more than just a baby.

The moon was bright and high. So, so, high.

Why does the sun take its time? He mused. Why does the moon ridicule us with its light? All I want is to sink into the ground—so I would not have to hear her scream. So I would not have to watch her go through this pain.

If only the roles were reversed. I would gladly take this suffering for her. As I have all others.

Hyacinth looked like he always did.

Purple. Unfazed. Standoffish. He did not feel that way though. He felt pain. He felt blue. He felt like a coward... how could he leave his wife to deal with this alone?

He found himself speaking, more to reassure himself than her. What a good time it would be for magic.

“Change comes in different ways, at different times, and to different people. We cannot question why it happens this way, because it is not our place to question.”

A heave. Another twitch, and he felt like his cells had been drained of life. His knees went weak, and he did not feel like his roots could carry him.

The scritch-scratch of sticks being drawn across the ground.

The crumble of rocks against the movement of roots.

“Change is constant, and life is magic.” He was close enough to touch her now. His hands went to her bulging abdomen and he cradled it fondly. Like a long lost lover... like a longtime friend. “Life is experience, life is journey. Life is love, and life is death. There is always a trade—something given for another. I do not pray to lose you, Marigold.”

Her breathing slowed, and he could almost feel her pain being soothed. But it was not enough. He knew this. It was never enough.

Marigold opened her eyes and stared into his face. Her eyes had a fire in them that did not seem to ever go out, but tonight, the fire was dimmed and her face—oh, that face that had seen many a countless moon; that face that had laughed all through the nights of the Passing; that merry, round face that had known love even before he had, the shining, yellow face that had held many smiles... always a smile—was contorted now, scrunching every few minutes in agony that was beyond his ken.

“I would take this burden for you if I could. I cannot lose you. Come back to me. Make your trade, but do not give death for life—I would not be able to live with myself. Trade, Marigold, and come back to me, my love.

“To birth life, there must be a tipping of the scales—a balancing. We know this. So trade pain for life. Trade anger for joy. Trade sorrows for love. Marigold, change the story. Make magic.”

* * *

A woman is not weak because she is soft. She’s a power that is beyond strength and hard-packed muscles.

* * *

“So, you’re at your limit. You’re at the end, eh?”

“Don’t try to stop me.”

“Me?” the wizened old man asked. He had a gaunt expression, a thin lip, and a notably even thinner tolerance range. His tight-lipped smile was not a smile.

“Why ever would I try to stop you, boy? I’m just an old man and I’ve got no time for the world or any of its petty squabbles.” He said and dusted the rock beside him as if he could sit on it. As if he wasn’t a plant.

“By all means, boy, jump.”

He smiled his thin-lipped smile that wasn’t really a smile again and watched with beady eyes. His ratty green cloak was torn in several places, and some of the leaves were falling out.

A few strips of his once-brilliant orange plume of soft, feather-like petals had fallen off, yet his colour shone in the sun. He seemed to be the only one who didn’t bother about the sun.

He was Old Sunflower, of course.

“Why are you still here, son? I thought you wanted to jump? Just jump so high and pull your roots out and let the wind do the rest, eh? You’d be dead in a few hours from the lack, and before the next morning, you’d be dried out as a stick and we’d just pay you a pitying glance and go on about living life. Why are you still here? Go on, jump. Don’t be shy.”

Don’t mock me!” Bellflower bellowed. “You don’t know what I’ve been through. You don’t know what it’s like.”

“Oh, sure. Why not. I’m just an old man after all. You know, we’re the same age, and you’ve got the same experience as myself. Please, jump.”

“Stop doing that! I have to do this.”

“Then do it and stop bantering with me.” Old Sunflower said as if as an aside.

“Why are you here?” Bellflower asked in his crouched position. Several of his beautiful stalks had been plucked out of his flowing apparel, and there was an irregular cut near the hem of his bell.

“Why I’m here to watch an idiot jump. Isn’t it obvious?”

“You don’t know me.” Bellflower muttered and turned away. “You don’t know my past—”

“Your past?” The old man suddenly shot forward, stick raised high. At the last moment, his hand fell and the stick landed heavily to the floor. The old man crumpled to the floor too.

Bellflower glanced at him and turned back.

“You’re a fool if you think this is the easy way.” The old man said as he picked himself up. He clutched the stick with both hands and pressed it heavily into the ground. “You talk about the past as if you know anything about it. You youth. All idiots.”

He slapped at the air and walked back to the rock where he was standing before.

“Go on then, I’m not stopping you.”

“Why are you here?” Bellflower asked as he turned to the man.

Old Sunflower kissed his teeth and scrunched his face in the other direction. “Imagine that. Asking why I’m here. Here I thought I had found someone who was actually serious about jumping.”

Bellflower crossed the distance between them and knelt before the man. His eyes were searching. Pleading blue orbs set into a handsome face. “I have to do this. The past—”

“THE PAST?” Old Sunflower yelled. “Forget your past! Forget whatever happened. It happened. The end. Move on! You think the past is all your fault, or that life has been unfair to you. You think that you are the first one that whatever happened has happened to. You’re not.

“The past is not a to-do list. It’s a calendar. You plan with your past... for your future. You don’t know what’s wrong with you.”

Storm clouds rumbled in the darkening sky.

“You know nothing about me.” Bellflower said darkly. He did not wipe the tear that strolled lazily down the contour of his cheek.

“I don’t need to. I see a man who’s willing to throw everything away simply because things didn’t go as he planned.”

Bellflower hung his head, unable to stop the tears that ran down his face.

Fat droplets of rain spattered on the ground. Old Sunflower sighed and looked up to the sky. The rain blessed his face with their tiny, fleeting kisses.

“Close your eyes, son.” He said to Bellflower. “Hold...”

“Do you feel the way those droplets cling to your skin, dappling you in a feeling you cannot even relate to experience?

“Soak it in...

Bellflower’s eyes were closed, but the tears still came. And that is what is beautiful about the rain. No one can see you cry. No one can see you break down. No one can blame you for being soft or wet or weak, because the rain falls on everybody.

He sank to his knees and felt something clawing up out of him.

It was a scream.

It was anguish. It was pain. It was brokenness. Sunflower had his face turned up to the sky. When he spoke, his voice came from a distant place—far beyond the both of them. Far beyond the plains being soaked by the offering of the skies.

“Absorb.”

Bellflower sniffed and inhaled. The air passed through his nostrils like they were meant to. It flooded him.

He could have sworn that he could taste the wind in his mouth.

“Adsorb...”

He felt the rain cling to his skin. To his hair. It soaked his petals and his flowing white bell apparel.

It chilled him to the bone, but somehow, he could feel a warmth too. A warmth that was not there before. He tilted his head to the sky, relishing the feeling of the rain drops as they sluiced through the sky and found his face.

The tears fell, but no one knew.

No one would know.

“Now absolve.”

His exhale was the sound of a spring shooting back its original position. It was the sound of a bird freed from its cage. It was the sound of wind whistling through the green; through the trees...

It was freedom, it was peace.

“Lose your past, son. Let the God-blessed rains wash you and cleanse you. The mud that pools at your feet now, sticky, reluctant to let you go... that is the past. You feel the weight, do you not? That is what you’ve been carrying for so long—an unnecessary burden.

“Step out of them: your guilt, your shame, your past... everything. Step out of them, as you would dirty underwear—with loathing, with scorn and discontent—step out of the past, and awaken in a new future.”

Old Sunflower did not know where his voice came from. It sounded deeper. More meaningful. Weighted.

It sounded right.

“Let the pains of the past be washed away from your heart and your mind, like the rains that wash away the filth from your skin. Allow the waters cleanse you.”

Bellflower could not feel anything anymore. He could not see anything. But he could still hear the old man’s voice. One leg went up.

Tentative.

“Now, step out of them.”

The leg landed.

“Step out that filth,” another leg rose and came down. “Come, climb this rock. And let your past go with the rains... down a forgotten drain.”

When Bellflower opened his eyes, he was beside Old Sunflower. The man was grinning. His eyes sparkled.

What had happened?

“Look at you. Your colour’s returning.”

The rains stopped and the sun seemed to peak out from behind the clouds. “My boy... You’ll live yet again. And just as the rains have watered the earth to make room for new growth, so you too will grow. You’ll live. You’ll bloom.

“You’ll blossom and smile... you’ll be florescent again.”

* * *

The past is like a cuff or sleeve. Depending on how you wear it, your future is affected.

We are lives and choices. Not just humans—not burdens. There is light in us if we let it show.

We are life, we are experiences. Florescent...

Emmanuel is a Nigerian writer who writes in prosaic form. He writes a few lines of what he thinks is poetry and schools in Nigeria as well. When he is not writing, he can be found reading or watching anime, or nerding out over fandoms and science. He enjoys music thoroughly.