You Forgot Your Floaties

It was a windy day. The overgrown grass was swept by the breeze, looking like waves as the sun shone over the length of its flowing blades. Emma and Maisie took their place underneath the shade of the blossoming magnolia tree. Some lone flowers shaken from the branches did too. They fell and rolled and eddied around the two figures and the base of the tree.

Emma was sat cross-legged and leaned on the tree, and Maisie was laid down on her lap. Emma was flicking away at all the petals that were landing on Maisie, which earned a huff from the girl.

“Stop that. Just leave them be.”

Emma flicked another petal that landed on Maisie in the direction of the thicket.

As another petal began its descent, Maisie pinned Emma’s advancing hand to stop her from disturbing the pink blossom that now rested on Maisie’s arm. “Must you be so stubborn?”

Playfully, Emma flicked the petal anyway, this time aiming for Maisie’s face.

Maisie lets out a surprised squeak at the petal hitting her.

“This is nice, isn’t it?” Emma said with a little laugh at her friend’s disgruntled expression.

She was met with a scrunch of a nose.

“Speak for yourself. The petals cry at your harassment.“ Maisie said. She forcefully brushed the petal away from her face with an indignant flourish, but the start of a smile pulling on the corners of her lips said otherwise.

Emma looked fondly at Maisie, unable to contain the smile that mirrored her friend’s. It’s not often that they got to indulge in silly moments like this.

Or at least not anymore, she thought. It made her all the more insistent to propel the stray petals that landed on her friend, as if the more she did this, the longer they would be locked in this moment under the tree where the petals flowed endlessly. She didn’t want to leave this perfect moment.

This flicker of hesitation was not lost on Maisie. She looked expectantly at her friend and softly called, “Emma?”

Emma tried to muster a reassuring smile but faltered at Maisie’s unconvinced look. Maisie was nothing if not insistent and Emma knew that she wouldn’t escape her friend’s thoughtful gaze until she said what was bothering her.

Emma picked on the grass at her sides with a sigh.

It seemed that she would not say anything more than that until after a long moment, in a small voice she admitted, “I’m crazy tired, Maisie.”

She kept her gaze on the grass, avoiding Maisie’s eyes. Afraid that if she met them, her friend would be able to see through all the troubles she had locked behind them.

Although, her attempt was as good as nothing because once she began talking, it was like unspooling a thread. Everything came easier with Maisie. And she found that the words she had tried so hard to guard and keep at a distance for fear of being misunderstood fell freely.

“I think,” she paused, “I have been for some time now. But I had been doing so well, you wouldn’t think there was anything wrong. Even I didn’t think anything was wrong.”

“Hm?” Maisie hummed when Emma fell silent, “how do you mean?”

“It’s just that— when you’re working on as many things as I am, you don’t get time to think about whether or not you want to be doing what you’re doing. When at the end of the day all the recitals, competitions, and projects are done and done well, you just have to trust that all of it must amount to something because it makes everyone content and happy for you.” Emma was now fidgeting with her hands as she trailed off, and in a softer voice, ”and when they are then it must be because you’re doing something right.”

A silence fell over them as they both thought on this. The breeze filtered through the trees and carried the same lightness that it did just moments before when they were playing around with the petals that it carried.

Emma now looked up and regarded her friend with a deep pensiveness. “Right Maisie?”

Maisie met her friend’s eyes.

“Well, does it make you happy?”

Maisie reflected the same melancholy in Emma’s eyes. The question is innocent and straightforward and simple, but Maisie asked with a cautious tone that suggested she knew what the answer to this question was just as much as Emma.

No.

In Emma’s life, there was no time for thinking, not for sadness nor happiness when all it had ever been was a whirlwind of events that never ceased. There was always something to do, and when there was none, accolades and affirmations followed from the things she did before. And with each accolade, her feet became more deeply planted into the stones others had set there for her that determined where she was meant to go. This made it more difficult to venture anywhere else.

And where was that? What was beyond this little tunnel that she had blindly followed?

She didn’t know.

What scared her more was the thought that she would not be able to find out. That she was far too rooted in the things she had dedicated herself to that taking on any other path would have meant leaving parts of herself in the places that used to keep her.

And what would she be if she was less of herself then? Would it make her a happier Emma? Granted, a lesser Emma— but happier.

She was happy, she thought. Being recognized and appreciated for the things she has done made her content. As though to say all the trouble to get there had been worth it. And for the longest time that was enough.

But now? Emma was tired.

She often lost herself in the daydream of what it would be like to be nothing. To be bereft of the recognition or the appreciation of the people. To be forgone of all the trouble that came from toiling at an endeavor that she herself did not know why she had to be working toward in the first place. What would it have been like to be at the eye of the whirlwind where everything was calm? To stop for a moment. To be met with a silence that allowed for her thoughts to speak. So then, to hear the voices in her head that said she no longer wanted to do any of it.

That was what this moment was, with Maisie under the magnolia tree and all of its petals around them. The brief moment of respite from all of Emma’s endless tasks that allowed her innermost thoughts to be heard.

That is, knowing since the very beginning that this was not what she wanted but already finding herself too deep in the muck to get out. Then the only thing there was to do was to ignore everything. Ignore the voices, ignore the muck, and keep trudging for everything had to lead somewhere no matter how unpleasant.

Perhaps she had reached that point. Only her mistake was thinking that the unpleasant point would be a dissatisfying refuge at the end of the bog. No, it was this point where she found herself now. The scary, honest, and overwhelming point where you’re chest-deep in all of the things around you telling you that you had to get out.

Emma frowns at the realization.

“I don’t think I can be happy and be who they want me to be.”

At this, Maisie sits up and regards Emma with thoughtfulness. Maisie looked at her with an understanding that Emma herself did not possess. Maisie was radiating with a sense of certainty that almost made it seem to Emma that Maisie knew how everything would turn out. This made Emma’s chest alight with hope that Maisie would have the answers she was looking for. And maybe she did.

Almost incredulously, she said to Emma, “Why would you have to be anything other than what you already are?”

Maisie smiled kindly at Emma. It was the kindest smile she had ever seen. One filled with so much adoration and love that made Emma breathless and left wondering why anyone would ever look at her in such a way when she was at her ugliest, most unsure self. That she deserved to be looked upon so highly when she was, at that moment, stripped bare of every good thing that she has ever done and only carried with her her plain, empty, skeptical, and singular self.

She understood that, in that moment, she was nothing but herself and that had been enough for Maisie.

Sweet, kind, and wonderful Maisie.

Their days apart had made Emma somewhat resentful of Maisie. Emma being pulled in one too many directions all at once had left her angry and distant, and in the rare moments where she thought to walk the distance and look to Maisie for comfort, she was met with encouraging words that only served to put her in a worse mood and wanting even more distance between her and everyone else. Emma thought Maisie was too placating.

Emma knew better than to assume that Maisie was being dismissive on purpose, but it didn’t help when it felt like she was drowning and there Maisie was on the shore telling her to swim harder.

It was a ridiculous thought, she saw that now.

In the afternoon light, Maisie looked the way she always did. But now, Emma could see her clearly without any of the anger, resentment, and weariness that shrouded her vision before. Maisie was basked in the sun’s light. She emanated with a soft glow that revealed the hopeful sparkle in her eye and the fierce challenge in her smile.

Emma saw the Maisie that had been with her in the water the whole time. This was Maisie who had tried to reason with her from the raft, but Emma, too angry at Maisie for being on the raft while she had to flail against the waves, refused to listen. Maisie, who grasped at straws to understand a distant friend. Maisie, who, throughout it all, loved her anyway when Emma had everything to take and nothing to give.

Her dearest Maisie.

Maisie was the sun. She was the warm ray of light that permeated everything from the rippling blades of grass to the unwavering trunk of the tree. She was who the wind greeted with delight and who the blushing magnolias unfurled their petals for. And Emma was only one of the magnolias who had waited patiently a year to get one taste of the sun on a perfect April day, to then bloom only once in acceptance of this warmth, and feel the way this light caresses the petals one last time, before the wind takes it at last and leaves it for the ground to swallow back into the earth.

Emma smiled.

Happier Emma was not a lesser Emma, at least not in Maisie’s eyes. Emma would always be who she was, even if she did less of the things that have made her herself thus far. And that was enough for Maisie. She finds that— that’s enough for her too.

Emma reached for a magnolia flower that fell into the patch of grass beside Maisie. She thought of the one place that all magnolia flowers belonged to. The magnolia flowers which longed for the sun and only ever lived to be under the embrace of the very thing that gave it life.

Emma tucked the pink blossom into the strand of hair behind Maisie’s ear.

❀⋅˚₊‧ ଳ⋆.ೃ࿔*:･₊ ⊹

for cara— you are the sun, i am but one of the magnolia flowers who bloom at your warm embrace :)