The Earth Laughs in Flowers

✨c h a p t e r the f i r s t✨

Thirteen Years Ago:
The Real

•••
Summer of 2015
Clark

When I was eighteen, Uncle Edmond took his own life because Aunt Margaret was having an affair, and he would have rather died than live without her. Their story was similar to Shakespeare's great tragedy, only Aunt Margaret didn't care enough about Uncle Edmund to end her own life. Instead, she began a new one after his passing. She moved into her lover's apartment, and they had a baby six months later. I've always wondered how Aunt Margaret could've moved on so quickly after losing Edmund. Sure, she was in love with someone else, but nobody can ever replace someone you love. Not even if you no longer love them. I never understood Aunt Margaret, especially after I lost Maya.

Maya and I were inseparable. She would stay at my house almost every weekend, we would stargaze almost every night, and we would talk almost every moment we were awake. I loved her—love her still—and I knew from the moment I read her letter that I could never love another person. I could never be like Aunt Margaret and move on.

However, I could imagine our life together. I could imagine us graduating high school, going to college, getting married, and growing old together. Because that would be a lot more story telling than I'm up for, I'm going to tell you what I think would happen to us the summer after graduation. I'm going to tell you how I think our love would be, where it would go, and what we would do. After all, our love doesn't have to die with our bodies, for my love never dissipated with her soul. Instead, it grew everyday after I lost her, and I know it will continue to grow until I too have dissipated into oblivion.

So, dear reader, instead of Shakespeare's tragedy, I give you a happier hypothesis of my and Maya's life had she lived with me just a little longer.

Thirteen Years Ago:
The Hypothetical Story

She was a glorious combustion of color and brilliancy whenever she smiled, frowned, swore, or basically breathed. She was the equivalence of beauty, and she was equal to the weight of the universe.

Her golden curls hung about her face messily as she browsed through various colleges on my desktop computer in the corner of my room. She was frustrated after having spent the entire afternoon of our first Monday after graduation searching for a college in hopes she still had time to apply for the fall semester.

"Dammit!" She cursed for the eighth time within the past ten minutes, "no colleges I'm interested in are taking applications this late! I'll have to submit one for the spring term if I want to go." Her if I want to go was a big if because Maya never imagined herself going to college before. She barely wanted to finish high school. All she wanted was to escape her home, her life, and start somewhere new. At eighteen, college seemed to be that new place as the realization of graduation sunk in. "What should I do, Clark?" She whined as she turned around in the chair and placed her chin on the top of the back rest. She jutted out her lower lip and pouted as she awaited my answer.

Instead of responding immediately, I took my sweet time as I admired her from afar. I was on my bed reading a book, and I slowly closed it as I gazed at the beautiful girl in my room. Maya wasn't the type of beautiful that you noticed immediately, but she was the type of beautiful that once you cracked it open it tended to ooze all over you until all you saw was a nebula burst of beautiful color that blinded you entirely. She was gorgeous with her blonde hair and brown eyes; her tacky neon green overalls; her transparent, black t-shirt underneath; and her bedazzled jean jacket. She was Catherine Earnshaw, a "wild, wicked slip of a girl who burned too brightly for this world." Only Emily Brontë understood the rare beauty that Maya possessed.