Short Story: Simple Rules

Happiness was the most fragile of things and I had the stupidity to break it.

Nurture the frail flower! Water it every day! Feed it properly (or at least regularly)! And please don’t break it.

Those were the four simple rules that I had set on the day I bought the pills and promised myself to never take them. I had them in the palm of my hand, the little white and yellow balls that the child in me wanted to play with; I had them and all the happiness they were supposed to bring.

But no!

I told myself that fertilizers were not the way to go. Who knew what those chemicals would do to my poor exhausted flower. No. I would take care of it myself. Following my four simple rules.

Nurture. Water. Feed. Do not break.

And I did, oh how carefully I did.

And it grew, and it bloomed, and it flourished. It took on its natural pastel colour and opened its petals for the world to see.

And it was beautiful.

But I saw the storm coming from afar. I saw its rich violets and blues and reds and heard the blissful anthem of its winds. I had seen that storm before. I had dreamt of that same storm and written and talked about it until it had swallowed me completely. It had broken my flower once; I should not have let it do it again.

But instead of building a shelter I built a life wall. I put myself in front of the fire and wind, and breath, and devastation and waited.

Hush!

Can you hear that?

It’s coming.

I took the first blow standing. I smiled at the eyes of the storm and ask how it had been doing. I was strong. I was brave. I was daring.

I was stupid.

The storm answered with another, weaker blow that caressed my skin and made me shiver a cold shiver. It was the dead breath of a lover that never woke to love. It a gravestone with no name on it.

But the blows kept coming sweet as ice-cream. And I was the one melting.

It was the warmth of my body that betrayed me first. The warmth and shape of my body that was embraced oh so perfectly by the storm and made me believe it was just a breeze.

I turned my face to the storm but did not recognize it anymore. It was spring and it was birds and they were singing. And it was the smile of the deceiving sun that bent me.

It wasn’t the sun’s fault for my fall, however. A life wall takes more than one guardian. But here there was another who saw the light and not the torpedo and was blinded beyond belief. The guardian stepped forward and fell dead in the hands of the horrendous enemy that we were both in love with; the guardian was dead.

But the guardian broke the wall, and it was so hard to stay alone. And I was bent on my knees by that time, regardless, and there was no hope, for I was so exhausted. A lightning came and stroke down the betrayer, but that was I, and my flower had now no protector.

Fool!

My flower lies now dead beside my body.

But the rules were so simple…

Nurture. Water. Feed.

DO NOT BREAK.

Broken.