Lost Irises

*Note: Story contains references to mental health, grief, loss, and self-harm.

The azure skies descended into a blaze of bronze, copper, and Chardonnay that stained the cotton candy clouds above her. The horizon was a blur as the falling light glittered silver on the crests of sea foam on the storm-churned sea. The dune grasses flashed gold from the whipping wind.

Why was it so much easier to accept the changing of an impossible probability of this planet surviving yet another rotation while her world crashed around her feet? An iridescent black ink of despair had enveloped her heart and mind. For her, the world was as dark as the darkest moonless night, like when you squeeze your eyes shut tightly to push out the thoughts of monsters under the bed as a child, alone in the darkness where nothing could hurt you. Now that lonely, cool darkness wrapped around her heart, coating her world in murky grey. As the fading sun illuminated her face, its warmth struggled to pierce her skin.

She arrived here hours ago. Walking among the evergreens on the familiar uneven path to this bluff, however, this time, alone. The Spring storms of last week watered the already pre-summer dried landscape. The grass returned to its vibrant lushness overnight. The breeze through the renewed, young leaves of the forest canopy changed from harsh, crackling to soft, silken whispers.

Everything could return to how it once was with light, water, and time, but not her, and resurrection was a fallacy. Beside her, the dull grey capsule – a proper urn, they all commented, sat beside her. Its faux gold gilding glimmered in the afternoon light. She plucked at the deadened grass as she rested with him at the cliff side, as before. The white roots clinging dependently to the rich black soil even as the green life had shriveled.

They were poor like the loamy dirt they built upon, but they were happy.

He once called her his “goddess,” her eyes “holding the darkness of the deepest ocean”, her skin as “the softest petals of the most delicate Spring flowers”. From her toes to the crown of her head, that man worshipped her, and she him.

His hard-working hands, bearing the same roughness of a resilient river stone, buffed away her sensible attitude and tender skin as a young woman. His laugh was a roaring resonance, as loud as any crashing wave, and often just as unpredictable. His eyes - oh, those irises held everything with such tenacity. She stared at the random miracles of those fragrant, showy blooms that grew wild and free along their spot and in their garden. They used to be like them.

Nothing compared to those irises that held his soul. When the light hit his eyes just so, they were as warm as honeyed mead to a dark, robust coffee that would meet hers every waking moment. They twinkled bright as stars when he laughed – and, oh, how he looked upon her. The way his eyes burned like coals lit up with the amber-colored whiskey on his breath during those perfect Spring nights when the windows were open, and the curtains danced in the moonlight.

Her heart fractured like glass. The long cracks started with a chip – and another chip, and the next and the next as the outlook darkened with each and every shred of hope that was pulled out from under them. Each visit felt as though they rowed into the middle of stormy grey waves that would thrash them against the salty sand of shorelines. Thus, hope was worn down fast, leaving facts and statistics from learned men in white coats, and then resignation.

The sickness changed him to a sickly grey with a mottling of colors like that of the sunset that stretched above her now. How could one change be worshipped while a similar one be fought so hard against – death of a realm – day to night, life to death. Even in his resignation and later acceptance, his irises held straight and true – beholding her even as she prayed, screamed, cursed, and let the rage burn through her heart at the unfairness.

How can this world still be vibrant as he returned to dull, grey dust and ash – a mocking color to how radiant he made the world. God formed man from the earth, and to the earth, he will return. Releasing him on the sea breeze atop this cliff to fall to rocky shores below was the plan – his final wish.

“Go, my love, to the seashore, go to the cliff, go as high as you can, release me as close to God as you may. I worshipped Him as I did you, for He gave my life meaning by giving me you.”

He worshipped her all his days, through the bleakness of Winter, the joys of Spring, the heat of Summer, and the toils of Autumn. Through every storm and season, they worshipped each other.

Why. Oh, why, just another Spring with those blessed irises? To be held in such gaze as a lover would for all the days and years she lived? Oh, she would give all to die at the end of every season, only for life to bloom again. She would give everything to have those irises to behold her again.

Is this what the ghosts of forgotten worshippers felt when their temples collapsed to ruins? This resonance of unacceptable blasphemy of change?

She was his Hero, and she, his Leander.

The sun-eclipsed wings of sea gulls cast long shadows across her prone form. As they cried in the clouds, she longed to mirror their screams. You expect yourself to scream and cry and want the whole world to share your pain. She finished the losing battle with that intangible spirit. She pleaded and prayed for that soul to stay in that broken body that refused to fix itself for months.

He was calm as a spring dawn. That’s what she could remember. After days and nights of no rest, tending to the expiring, washing his feet and hands, worshiping this gentle, smiling man who asked for nothing and pleaded for nothing. He did not beg or cry or shout or let harsh words leave his mouth. She smoothed down the achingly thin arms that were but a memory of those ones that lifted, spun, and twirled her moods across those squeaky, splintering hardwood floors. Washed him, clothed him, sheltered his dignity – and he would still die alone, surrounded by her devotion.

“Ne’er be in sorrow, my love, I would never cause a shadow across this golden heart.”

What a liar he would become with his final utterance. Death dragged his feet but stopped for no one.

The mortal woman she is may have been a celestial to him, but he was her sun and moon. He was the quietness her mind needed, the confidence her steps relied on, the reliable trust to be there as the sun set and the moon and stars failed to illuminate the darkness that cast shadows upon their numbered days. Even the tides do not move without the moon’s coaxing nature, and plants spend a season growing, hoping to touch the sun.

Now he is no more than dust of the stars and behind a veil so thick only the chosen may pierce it.

The sky now faded to deep emerald greens as the golden hour slipped away. The dark purples and blacks like a bruise, spreading across the silken sky. A stain that permeated the veil that now separated them.

How dare a gaseous rock a million miles away be so beautiful and unending, an artist in the throes of untamed creative splendor, die at night’s crest with such splendor? Would she make such a splash of color?

Her lover left like the celestial bodies he made flesh, quietly and slowly from one moment to the next. His unsteady breaths were soft and erratic as the flutter of moth wings. His irises lost in an unseeing stare. A withered, brittle Iris bloom before the summer solstice. He faded softly like Winter snow as the sun arrived with wings of light that slowly banished the deep shadows from his face. His radiance was gone in a final pulse.

She now stood on the edge of the sea bluff as the colors faded and the new moon rose. Her hands were trembling as she held that grey urn. Can she – would she let go?

She, too, shall be like the goddess he made her flesh into – a sun collapses into darkness or explodes in a disaster of light. Would her wings be as white and bright as a dove’s?

“My Hero, pull me to you once more – eternally let us bloom in the garden. Catch me, darling.”