I’m lying on the fields of singing crickets, and I tone in, in harmony, with a deep breath.
My breath sounds like a saw, attempting a cut through stone.
I’m covered in flowers, all alone.
Let me begin by telling you about the season and weather,
Not because it’s an ice breaker,
But it’ll help you to understand this story better.
It was spring, a time of blossoming love.
Well so they say,
Whether that’s true or not, can only be decided by personal experience.
It colours the season with either rainbow touches, or with grey.
As a young child, my older sisters always told me;
Pick something blue,
pick something yellow,
pick something red,
Put it under your pillow when spring breaks through and ‘you’ll be kissed by your prince charming’, they said
I believed it.
Oh Johanna, you’re such a fool.
Years passed and spring was always a time of disappointment.
Yet it had to be done;
Blue
Yellow
Red
It was routine.
This year, this day, when snow crystals were nowhere to be found and apples were dressing the trees,
I went on my hunt for flowers, tired, on unstable knees.
I went through the luscious, dense forest, examining the gaps between the grand oaks along the muddy ground.
The wild animals lured me deeper into the woodland,
the sound of their fast hidings only lead me to prickly bushes and foliage, not to colourful flora.
Oh Johanna, you’re such a fool.
My wavy, pearl-blonde hair got stuck on branches and twigs,
‘Gah! What are you doing Johanna, you’re the only one out here who picks and digs!”
Patience started to run out like the last pinch of sand in a timeglass.
I set eyes on the neighbours farm,
Some fewer flowers on his fields couldn’t be a heinous crime, it wouldn’t harm
But mum’s the word!
I crawled on all fours up under his steady fence,
My whole body feeling stressed and tense.
The barbed wire stroke my back,
But due to lack of flexibility, it drew blood lines from my neck and down.
Yet I held my head up high, still, as if it was balancing a crown.
I gave in, for the very last bit,
Let my light body drop onto the moist ground.
Used my thin forearms to crawl, I was not going to quit.
I spotted it.
Blue
Yellow
Red
I sat up, reached out, for thy these flowers I had fought.
But then there was a rolling sound, a click and a shot.
My body dropped onto the dirty ground again,
A big wound spreaded, on my cotton shirt, a wine-red stain.
Now here I lie.
I don’t blame the farmer, trying to save his harvest from a deer.
However my lips start trembling and from my left eye-corner, there falls a tear.
All this for the blue, the yellow, the red.
It makes me smirk, and I stifle a last high-pitched breath.
Oh Johanna, you’re such a fool.
juliaharryson 