Blooming
Natalia Kaśkiw
You were such a scrawny, ugly little creature. Some of the others screamed when they saw you for the first time. I did nothing of the sort—I was curious. I was still at the age when I liked to play with mud in the rain and get dirt under my fingernails. I was a wild little thing, they said. Yet to me, you looked wilder. You looked odd.
The others didn’t see you again after that first encounter in the old garden. They might have simply forgotten about you, or perhaps you didn’t want to show yourself to them.
It was all very strange, but everything felt uncanny in those days.
As for myself, I could often hear you. Most days, you crawled through the earth and pulled flowers in fits of rage, destroying the garden.
I don’t think you were truly angry. I was angry lots of times, and I never did such things. But you... What else could you do? You were such a strange darling beast.
At night, you liked to trot along the barely lit corridors when everyone was asleep. The old house was possessed by your spirit, bright and new. Sometimes I would get up on my tiptoes and crouch by my closed door, feeding you words through it.
Those nights, you babbled and screamed, screeched and hissed. I felt your delight, and I was happy in return. You were my secret. But I always went quickly back to bed, spending the rest of my nights hearing you quietly from under my sheets.
During breakfast, when anyone complained about noises, I talked about imaginary nightmares, and you were always the ghost in my stories.
No one knew it, of course. They couldn’t. You didn’t have a name. No one would feel that you need it. You needed fur for the cold winters, food to grow, and a little smile to exist. I provided the last one along with other trinkets, like words and looks.
I wondered what you saw when you looked at me, if I was all limbs and words to you. Could you even see me? I can’t remember your eyes when I think of those days.
But you knew me. You were the only one. I shared with you scraps of food, secret messages, and many whispers.
It was truly a strange time. It still feels more vivid than the present.
I don’t know when everything started to change. Maybe it was my fault, because I didn’t notice right away. You suddenly had a proud forehead and a pair of hands, a cheeky look, and a clever tongue. You had much more, but you changed so fast, I wasn’t able to keep track. You were a tree with new branches that grew longer and stronger. Your leaves were painted in all kinds of vibrant colors. There were probably even flowers somewhere my eyes couldn’t see.
Long after noticing, I realized you must have met with the others when I wasn’t around. Yes, there must have been others. For you sometimes yawned like Mr. Orchid and sneezed like Miss Daffodil. You were as tall as Florian and as stubborn as Iris. Yes, it dawned on me with the force of a sudden rainstorm, you couldn’t possibly be mine, or not mine alone. You might have been someone else’s secret too, or perhaps you might never have been a secret at all. You were too alive to be a secret.
You were you. And I was... I wondered what I was. Was I changing too? Becoming more me than I was the day before?
I’m not sure. No one ever said anything about it to me.
Lately, I’ve been having these dreams: I’m running through the woods, and I think someone is behind me, but I turn and I see no one, not even a shadow. When the thickest part of the forest ends, I stop and catch my breath, and I’m once again in the old garden. It’s quiet and abandoned, like an old graveyard. There’s no one there.
I try to spend my days there now. I guess I missed it. I’m determined not to let it die. I sit there and read and wait for the time to pass. There’s nobody there except for me, but I can feel the place betraying me. I would suddenly find things that weren’t there hours before: a crushed flower, a ribbon, a group of bees.
And I keep imagining you lying there among the flowers with the others.
You look like everyone else these days, and yet you'll never be like them. At least not to me.
Soon I’ll have to go away, I know. It’s going to be like when a baby is snatched from their mother’s breast or when a plant is pulled from the earth. Painful. Tragic. My roots are all here. It’s all I know. I wish I could lie here forever under the ground.
But I’m not like you, I wasn’t born here. I’m like everyone else. Pain will come for me soon, I also know that. The only thing I don’t know is if I’m going to hate it or relish it. Maybe I won’t even care. But I’ll miss you, of that I’m sure. I’m missing you already.
These days, I try to lose myself in words. I hunt endlessly in the library, like a starved and heartbroken hunter, a killer with no prey.
I read in the sun, I don’t care for the shade. I read there in the garden until I feel feverish and like I’m going to faint. I’m lying on the ground, so I’m not scared.
Today, I close my eyes. I’m thinking about the book’s words in my head. I’m not thinking of you. I’m trying not to.
That’s how you find me. I know it’s you instantly.
You block the sun, making the day darker with your shadow, sending a shiver down my spine. My lips curl instantly.
“Lily,” you say my name for the first time, and the greedy part of me wonders if this is your first word. I want it to be.
I open my eyes, and you are just a silhouette. A dream.
My name still hangs between us, spilling from your mouth, and I want to taste it. I’m hungry for your words, for your voice.
Your tongue is faster than mine, you taste it from your own lips, and flash your teeth in a wide, wild smile. Then you bend down, and I feel the sky is descending upon me. Your mouth opens like you are going to devour me right there, in the same old garden where we first met.
I’m lying among the red roses I planted weeks ago. Their color is beautiful, and their thorns are sharp. They are the same as your eyes, the same as our kiss. Spring has finally come, and we are blooming.
Natalia Kaśkiw
Natalia Kaśkiw is a half-Spanish, half-Polish writer with a gothic heart and an endless love for fairy tales. A self-proclaimed fem gaze paladin, she enjoys weaving dark tales of magic, horror and romance focusing on female characters and their journeys. She lives mostly in her head and sometimes in Spain.