Page 29 of Poetry of Flowers

I had woken up before anything else happened in this dream, and took an ice-cold shower, washing away the dirty thoughts.

I lost my virginity the same year to forget about her, and about my messed-up mind. Matilda Avril had been my best friend since she was four hours old, not only was she the forbidden flower I would never pick in a field full of red roses because she was much too pure for my rotting soul, no, she also needed to love herself before she could ever love someone else.

She was angry at me when I told her I didn’t want sleepovers anymore because she didn’t understand my reasons. God, I couldn’t tell her I almost dreamed of her straddling me in my bed while her tongue was sunk deep into my mouth.

“Why? Did I do something while I slept? Or something disgusting?” she had asked, hurt by my decision because she was unable to sleep without me next to her.

She finally understood what I meant when I told her my mom was scared, we could do something intimate, which also told me she had never thought about me that way.

Since then, I always stayed until she fell asleep before climbing out of her window to return to my house without waking her family. The Avril house was old, and the front door made this scary noise throughout the entire house when you opened it, that’s why I decided to use the window as my exit.

It wasn’t too much effort, there was a tree next to her window and it wasn’t that high.

I could walk through the front door of my own house, so it was a perfect routine.

Today, however, I promised her that I would stay. I meant to sleep over at Theo’s house because I couldn’t stand another night on my own, but I couldn’t leave Tillie like this either. Especially, as Autumn had to go home to lie to her parents about some sort of school trip. I had no idea how she would convince them, but if anyone could pull this off, it was Autumn,

Theo had gone home too; I would pick them both up tomorrow morning to drive to Seattle, so we could get our train. Of course, I could have just used my car for the entire trip but, for one, I didn’t intend to drive that long, and I was sure there’d be many bridges to cross along the way and I didn’t want to upset Tillie.

Driving would probably be easier, but at least this way it would be an adventure.

Sleeping in motels was going to be fun, hell, I was a spoiled brat and was most likely in for a shock, but at least it would be an experience.

Both of them had already gotten home when I ordered us Chinese takeout, and we had watched a movie on the couch. Tillie had been silent the whole time the movie played before our eyes.

I made sure to wash up everything so that we wouldn’t come back to a mess. Come back… Was it a when or an if? I didn’t want to think about that.

I couldn’t leave Tillie here alone, and I still loved my brother and sister and my mother... I still loved her, even though she had betrayed me my whole life.

But she never acted like I was different from my siblings, in fact, when I think back, it felt like she even preferred me over them sometimes.

I’m the son of her first love, it’s still wrong towards Faith and Nash through.

I put the clean cups back in their usual place, switched off the lights and went up the stairs.

The pictures on the walls in the staircase made me smile. They showed Tillie and me as children. We were once so young and happy. What had happened?

When I walked into my best friend’s room, she was already passed out on her bed, her scarlet notebook lay open next to her.

Her therapist had recommended that she should write poems as a form of creative therapy, since she always loved to create.

Tillie shared her poems with me, at least sometimes, I was the only person she shared them with. Some rhymed, some didn’t.

Poems don’t have rules, if you feel the urge to write it down, it’s fate.

There is no good or bad when it came to creativity; the only things that exist are opinions, but the only important opinion was the artist’s.

Without looking, I closed the book, and placed it on the desk together with the pen she had still been clutching in her hand.

I took some loose shorts and a loose white shirt out of the bag I had bought here and changed into them in her small bathroom.

As I sat on the edge of her bed, I looked down at her features: the long light-brown lashes, the button nose and plump lips, the tiny scar under her left eye from when we had played karate as kids, and she had stumbled and hit her head on our dining table.

A light line between her freckles, it caught my attention because it was so light in contrast to her slightly tanned skin. Her hair was soft as it touched the tips of my fingers while I brushed it out of her face.

She was so incredibly beautiful. She looked like my favorite song.

Her nose twitched and she slowly opened her big brown eyes. She looked annoyed at being woken up.

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