Submission 219
To my Florest,
To my Florist,
How lucky I am to miss you so desperately.
In the years after you died, we’ve all spent many hours trying to understand what happened, what could have happened, what we could have changed, questions that rearrange your world. I think that’s partly because we’re all still so young, with a desperate need laced with naïvety to rationalise the irrational and work out what our favourite colour is by the end of each day, only to wake up and change our minds. But I think that’s the nature of how you died, it’s not linear or something that can be prepared for. I’ve since stopped trying to neatly piece together answers, something’s are simply not that simple. That’s why we have grey, techno and question marks.
I don’t seem to miss you in lots of ways I suspected I would, getting the train without you has been relatively easy, I don’t envy buying 2 packets of strawberry Haribos (one is more than enough). Rather, I miss looking at the clock and knowing you’d be at work, to say “my friend's a florist” or hearing your voice carry through a crowd. I’m missing you at 20, 30 and 80 years old. P has always said she saves a candle on her birthday cake for you each year, “that little something missing” I don’t, my birthday is already too chaotic. But when I find myself with an empty seat beside me, I still believe so deeply that you’ll come back and sit right next to me, and sometimes, not often but sometimes, I think if I can just focus hard enough that you’ll be here again just for a moment or half a second. That must be a symptom of that childish optimism. None of us know anything really, I barely know what length I want my hair to be. I don’t think you even figured out if you preferred red or green pesto before you left, but how to die was a question with an answer to you. I’d dare to say far too soon.
Thats it though, I can see you falling asleep in a busy room just to be carried to bed half-awake, you’re just existing behind a distant door that’s too far for me to walk to, but your voice still holds a rhythmic echo to dance to. Just a little out of reach, but there. You’re brutally teaching me that when you’re our age the whole point isn’t to understand, but to see things with this blinding optimism and go dance. As one of my uni friends wrote “when the world is going up in flames, I think dancing might save your life”. Well our worlds have survived the flames, and I still think everything’s going to be ok, mainly because I know we’ve got your music to listen to and I can leave this city and go home. Even if you won’t be there when I arrive.
Now we’re all nearly done with uni and in not too much time, we’ll all have to buy new coats and then some more sunscreen. I'm filled with this ambivalent serenity, knowing wherever I go, whoever I meet and whatever I do, I have the gentlest person I've ever met inviting someone new to fill up every empty seat beside me. When I get a bad haircut, broken-up with or lose my job I’ve got a piece of innocent optimism pushing me to stand up a little taller signed in your name. I'll just buy some flowers, go dancing, pick a new favourite colour and wait for my hair to grow back.
Thank you for helping me in all the ways I’ll never see,
All my love, always and forever.