My Lily

surrealism, flash fiction, and flowers.

Every seed, every infatuation, and all of the decay in the world, has led to the last time that I saw those white, delicate petals of Lily’s fading down my street. I found her at my best friend’s funeral, the day some may say I lost my mind. Wilted, sadly outside the service, a lily flower laid in the grass. She didn’t weep, but rather stared into the abyss of the crowded tombstones, which I found irritating after a while. My friend, now beneath the earth, had been allergic to lilies. 

I stood above her, covering her stem of a figure with my shadow as people left the cemetery: “You really don’t have to do that. It was my friend that died, not yours,” she didn’t react. Her rooty hair matted into the grass and her white dress had become muddied. She said nothing. Regret entangled my tongue, which should have been cut off. My words had been too harsh, so I laid down beside her and felt the earth caressing my spine as though holding back from eating something rotten, whole. 

It was suffocatingly sunny today, sunnier than it should have been in spring. Both of our eyes were filled with tears, even if for different reasons. I could hear a ringing as I blinked them away, which then became the sound of cicadas in the grass surrounding us. I hate bugs and considered sitting up.

She turned her head and looked intensely at me with big, sad eyes, which glimmered green: “I’m Lily.” She said her name as though she were scared of it, as if it were an apology. 

From that day forth we became the strangest of friends. Lily was dainty and radiant. She always smelled sweet and knew the right thing to say, even when her actions got us into trouble. She would smile a wide, contagious grin at security guards who caught us trespassing during our adventures. They never understood how a man could be so infatuated with a flower.  Of course she was never scared of strangers and would befriend them in public. I’d sit in awkward silence while people smelled her. Intense, passionate, while delicate, lillies became my favorite flower. 

White truly was her favorite color, while mine was navy blue. I felt dull, but she wanted to visit a lot and always asked to sit in a tub of water and face the sun. During the day we’d listen to Bob Dylan and I’d find sanctuary in her. At night she’d kiss me as if we were bandits and I was her Jack of Hearts. Free-spirited, she didn’t like labels. Maybe I was a tool for her, but to me, she was my special friend, my beautiful Lily.

One day she looked droopier than normal. It had been a while since I’d provided her water or seen the sun. Then there was distance. She didn’t ask to come to my place anymore, so one day I went to hers. By then it was June. She told me that she had gone too many days without seeing the sun and would die soon. Once again, I found myself as deranged by her as when we first met. She was being stupid and I didn’t want to lose her. I have a hard time letting things die: old friends, past lovers, even flowers. 

She said matter of factly, “everyone dies when they haven’t seen the sun for too long.”

“Is there something that I can do? I can put you in water, I can set you outside even if you prefer.”

“It’s been cloudy for a while now.”

“Even on cloudy days, there are still sunrays.” I hoped that this obvious fact would bring her epiphany that she was actually going to be okay. She remained quiet and had no reaction to my words.  

“You can sit in the sun, Lily,” I said through my teeth. It seemed so obvious. If a flower is dying, you put her in the sun. If you’re feeling sad, then you hug your friends. If you feel unloveable, you open your eyes. Everyone is loved, even when most days are dull. Everyone should try to feel happy, but here she was, now laying on the floor like the day we met, helpless. I tried again, “It’s going to be okay, Lily. You’ll see the sun again soon.”

“I can see it, but I can’t feel it through the clouds.” I pressed my lips to hers. She kissed me back weakly. “You do know that I’m just a flower,” she said sadly. 

“If you’re a flower, then I want to be the sun.”

“You’re not the sun.” 

“I love you, Lily.” She stopped responding. She laid motionless and wilted. I could even see how one of her petals had torn. Maybe she wasn’t okay. She was helpless; I was helpless. I trudged home with my hands in my pockets. I was bad at talking to women, even worse at talking to Lily.

The next time that I saw her, she had planted roots in my front yard two months later. It was August and by then I had given up on lilies. 

“I missed you.” She said, gleaming at me. 

“Oh, okay.” 

“I got some sun and now I’ve been feeling better. I wanted to come to tell you something, can you guess what it is?” She’d always been eccentric. It exhausted me. 

“Are you happy with yourself, Lily?”

“What do you mean?” 

“You stopped calling and then just show up at my door one day. It was like you were dead.”

“Well, now I’m rejuvenated and also hydrated. I wanted to tell you that I love you too!” She said with giddy.

The words escaped my lips like water boiling over before you could lower the heat: “I love you, but we cannot be friends.” Her face shriveled up as though she’d been stung by a bee, the very thing that is meant to provide comfort to a flower. Eyes filled with tears, a gust of wind stripped her petals off of her one by one, leaving her floral scent still standing in front of me. I took a deep inhale in hopes of capturing her scent so that I’d never forget her because I knew that that would be the last time that I saw Lily. 

I never forgot Lily. How could I? She haunted me; each flower garden I passed, I wondered if I would see her. Every passerby was less eager to talk to me, now that I was no longer the fool who believed that he could keep a flower forever. Time passed, my world became modern, and I eventually found love again. I could never tell my wife that my first love was a flower, just like how I could never stop being reminded of her each time she wore a floral scented perfume. 

Today I received a small, surprisingly heavy package without an address. It humored me that the box carried a flower press. I figured that it was from one of my grandchildren as a gift. Opening up the packaging slowly due to my Parkinson’s, I managed to open the first page of the press and nearly dropped it all together. Inside the page was my Lily.

I held my pressed Lily in my trembling hands. She didn’t smell like herself, something was decaying and suffocatingly sweet. She had become crisp, although her petals still appeared delicate to the touch. I didn’t dare caress her as I once had. My sweetheart crinkled as I laid her back down into the flower press’s pages next to the words: “When I die, use me as your fertilizer, so you will go on.”