The sky was its darkest blue and the stars at its brightest. I knelt down beside the flower bed and let it go. The sand ran through my fingers, down the silk of my dress and gathered at the stem of the flower. I straightened my legs on the bed of grass, tilting my head to the side as I observed the beautifully colored petals. They had grown a shade of a brighter red towards the center and the green of the leaves was stronger from when I remembered. I leaned in closer to the flower.
A petal had withered off yet the remaining color covered up its loss. There was a tiny bud forming at the mouth of a branch, so young. I sighed, a patch of soil darkened with a teardrop beneath me. Pluck. It fell with a soft thud on the darkened soil. I sighed again. I sat up and whispered a song into the night, it was a childhood favorite.
I hummed the ending to myself; even years of listening to the song had not helped me remember the lyrics completely.
I looked at the bud…and gloated. I saved it from the pain of a gradual death. It would die anyway, would it not?
I closed my eyes and remembered my mother’s last words. My heart responded with a lurch.