Nothing lasts forever.

 

“Did you cry again?” 

Amidst the bleak silence, red ardent eyes, unspoken words at the brim of chapped lips and relentless worries were exchanged between the two. 

He knew.
(The answer was painted on her clammy skin, her palpably wrecked expression gave her out and on her forlornnesss that engulfed the air, smothering the scent of fresh flowers.
It was always the same reason, despite the numerous times he comforted her with saccharine words.)

And he knew why. 

He knew it all. 


Loneliness was an acid that ate their hearts when they were alone, confined within stark darkness. Nights like these, they would hear voices softer than the whispers of ocean waves and feel velvety kisses softer than petals planted on bruised, tear-stained cheeks.

The possibility of not losing herself as days went by was infinitesimal. 

“Don’t cry by yourself. Cry when I’m by your side, okay?” A smile was exchanged and the silence resumed, sniffs and erratic breaths followed by.

 

On the grey cemented floor laid a part of her, hollow and wistful. A tentative petal landed on the asphalt and her heart felt a tug.
 

Time was against flowers, beautiful but it couldn’t wait.
 

❀

He stumbled past a field of sunflowers one day and wondered what their stories were. Unable to speak, unspoken words and unsung melodies were restricted, annihilated. 

He met her somewhere between freedom and reality. The first time he laid eyes on her, he saw everything he needed to know about that crushed flower and her withered petals.

There were so many flowers to choose from but he particularly first saw her as a sunflower. He saw her underlying beauty; her inner kindness nature and damn, she was so beautiful. She danced merrily with the breeze, golden and upright.

Why her though? There were so many flowers. Why her when there were so many more?

With fingers so gingerly tender, he picked her up and told her that he was going to save her, from drowning herself in despair and from neglecting her hidden beauty.

 

He smelled of stale cigarettes and alcohol but she didn’t care, too caught up in the intangible emotions of his eyes, too engrossed in observing his chapped lips, his bruised cheek and the melancholia that ignited within his bones. 

And like he had promised, he attempted to save her. Funny thing was he needed saving as well, and so she tried.
 

They both tried.
At least they did.
At least they had each other.

 

❀ 

 

The coldness rattled her bones, empty and hollow but warmth from his body pooled into the crevices of her broken self. Right away, she knew she was safe and secured.

Tight were his arms around her waist and he held her like how the sky held the stars, like how clusters of primroses held onto one another as they danced in the sunlight. Even if he was afraid she’d crumble to pieces.



“Are you happy?” His voice echoed in the darkness, against her back. It sent chills down her veins, sensational and she liked it. The night was of inky darkness and a beautiful embrace.

The darkness that aded her vision was something she had grown accustomed to. She thought about him leaving her and vice versa one day but she opened her eyes to the bleak darkness.

Non-existence.

If they stopped being together; if they left each other; if they stopped loving, they sky would stop being blue and every flower including her would lose its hue. Like a colourless rainbow, like a black sun, like a dry rain petal.
 

“With you, I am.”
 

But he knew, all too well.
 

❀
 

She had the