The Diary, The Petal, and Her Spring

Written by Angela Zhou from Lakeview, Louisiana, USA

It's hard

not to take something pretty with you, 

things like those 

tiny, saturated flowers on the sidewalks.

A forgotten spring

tucked away in the pockets of my jeans.

Or the stars,

glittering across the sky,

things I cannot touch.

Things I cannot take.

Things that I wished to place in the midnight sky,

methodically and devotedly,

but didn't.

Those splendid pieces of fragmented time,

I wanted to melt inside.

Remember to capture those tiny remnants of beauty. Remember how the sheen of afternoon sun melts across the mint-green cover of the old diary. Its rubbery texture slid between her nails as she flipped through the pages. Shiff - shaff, the rhythm whistled gently under her breath until a dried, yellowish petal of jasmine interrupted the flow. As the papers rumpled on top of each other, a chocolate wrapper, several autumn leaves, and eraser crumbs appeared between the text. Those were her greatest possessions – fragments of memories reserved from so many places, so many people and so many springs. 

And we look all our lives 

for someone to get lost in prettier things with.

“Where have you been all my life?”

“Waiting for the right moment to show up.”

Most of her thoughts floated inside that diary. Every night, staring into the dark, she rediscovered the hollow in her heart, the craving to find someone who could interrupt those dreary streams of speculation.

Then, out of nowhere, he appeared, a skipping pebble across the lake, stirring up ripple after ripple in her bewildered heart. 

Shiff - shaff. 

On that humid April evening, when they strolled around the lake of Chestnut Hill, breathing in the timid warmth of the sunset, she suddenly felt compelled to share her story with him. She plainly described those experiences that once had overstretched her resilience. Her tone belied a lack of care or concern, while he listened quietly with his mouth folded. 

Only halfway through the story, she realized a line had glimmered down the boy’s rosy cheeks. She stammered. He said that he could see the lagoon, the halo, and the ripples in her eyes. He said he could see everything in her eyes. Then the silent trickling of tears turned into a torrent of sobs. He hugged her tightly, and they felt their heartbeats echoing against the other’s chest. 

They stayed that way for a long time.  

Shiff - shaff. 

She remembered the day that they had sat under the palm tree. Soft violin melodies sailed through the air. The June breeze blew through her eyelashes, while shadows of leaves flickered on the canvas. He raised his hands to touch the petals. Enclosing her sweaty palm around his fingers, feeling the tense precision of his wrist, they traced the edge of the petal. She sensed his misty breath brushing against her burning cheeks, her string of hair tickling the back of his neck. 

They are harder

to keep than the flowers and stars. 

They disappear

as fast as they showed up,

leaving their voice ringing on,

a thousand dreams after. 

Shiff - shaff. 

She remembers standing under the cherry tree, the quiet scent of springtime flowers rinsing the air, draping down the branches it once coated like honey. Dulled light flickered; grains of white petals swirled, gathering in clusters before settling on the asphalt road. Watching as the sparks fade behind his eyes, words jammed in her throat. Whatever they had seemed to slip away before she could register it was gone.

The pride she possessed kept her from admitting that she had shared the pure petals of flowers that had been protected carefully for years with someone unworthy. He hadn't cared for them, hadn't even wanted them; she lamented that those petals would never find their way back to her. 

Shiff - shaff. 

That final night was peaceful, despite its finality. After they talked – or more accurately, after he talked and she listened, unable to speak – he asked her if she hated him. 

She couldn’t answer, and the question echoed in her head as she stumbled back to her house and opened the diary. Though she couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment she had closed it, the book had lain untouched for ages. Perhaps it was when he had run into her life? A little pile of dust had since gathered on the once-glossy mint-green cover. 

“Hate.” 

Effective, but not quite right. Maybe what she felt was betrayal, longing, regret, or pain digging deeper into her flesh. It was chaos, constant noise in her brain, of splintered shards of glass dragging down her throat.

Why raise a flower knowing it will wither?

Those tulips, irises, primulas, wild chrysanthemums– 

I said it's for their first bloom;

Their scent 

tarries the spring. 

The resentment faded over time as she grew even more cautious and closed off. She sometimes thought back to that summer when she let her guard down, finally trusting a person instead of letting her doubt sabotage her happiness. She believed those petals of jasmine might forever be tarnished by his departure. 

Yet! When she opened that diary again years later, finding the wrinkled jasmine petal stained into the paper, she realized how he had never really left her life. Their once-echoed heartbeats and the smell of jasmine kissed by spring rain had crafted and changed a part of her. 

She started to compile different remnants of beauty, storing them between those tedious texts. As the last page of the diary unfolded between her fingers, chills swarmed through the girl’s body. Closing her eyes, she inhaled lightly: he wasn’t just him. It was them, every individual that she met over those sixteen rotations of spring, every individual that left traces in her life. 

Those pieces of her, crafted by them, would forever accompany the girl like souvenirs of their existence. They were meant to be there. 

Let everything happen. Be courageous. Be spring.