Wildflowers

I should have known better than to have trusted those gravediggers.

The weather was…well, I’m not actually sure how the weather was. I couldn’t exactly see the sky, or feel the breeze—if there were one—against my skin.

Darkness clung to me, as did the cold that naturally came along with being stuck inside a coffin. Even with those circumstances, however, I was no longer suffocated. At least, not by the weather or the lack of light.

When I was alive, I always hated the cold. 

Now though, my teeth did not chatter. Nor did trembles rack my body. A gentle chill merely rocked my mind at ease. I was one with it, as it was with me.

For a moment.

If my heart had been encased by marble since my passing, a swirl of anxiety and affection had certainly broken the shell. 

Blood raged in my ears. Perhaps it was only a phantom sensation. Because not only was I dead, but because he wasn’t there. My heart had no reason to pump otherwise, even as a hallucination.

I didn’t have to see the lack of his body next to mine to know he hadn’t been laid to rest next to me. But still, I needed the confirmation, even if fully knowing for sure would drive a stake through my rotting guts.

Propping myself up on my elbows was useless; my translucent legs were already floating upward, dangling above my headstone. 

Here Lies Helena Moore, A Lover

Yes, a lover. They got that much right, I suppose. 

My eyes slid over to the dauntingly empty space next to mine. The sight sent my lip quivering, that which I quickly sunk my canine into. 

I specifically requested we’d be buried next to one another, knowing the accident would likely have taken us both.

Because who is a lover without their muse? 

In my throat, a knot hardened. My hands fisted the jeweled neckline of my dress until they turned whiter. Once they did, I held a hand out in front of me, still endowed with the ring he gave me. Everything in me broke a second time.

“Helena.”

My eyes flew open. A pleasant shiver sliced up my spine. My name was truly a hymn on his tongue: whispered, softly spoken, honored like that of a deity. 

Color flooded back to my undead heart and painted the insides.

Standing at the foot of my tomb, he stared at the ground beneath my feet. 

I’m not sure how, but his hair had gotten longer since the accident—more unkempt. There was a glassy sheen shimmering over his eyes, grey patches formed underneath them. He was donned entirely in black, but the suit was different from the wedding suit he wore when we both died. 

It was darker. Much darker.

He had lost weight, too. Not that he wasn’t skinny before, but the suit he wore seemed to envelop him. His very countenance had sunken.

A hard swallow bobbed in his throat as he took a knee. “Why couldn’t it have been me?” he whispered.

“What do you mean?” I asked softly, attempting to graze my fingertips along the scruff on his jaw. But when my hand caressed his skin, it only phased through. 

Oh.

My nose stung, head throbbing with a hot intensity. A wave of nausea slammed inside of me. Uneven sobs tore quickly from my body, with no tears to show for them. 

My hands slid up the opposite arm as to give myself a pathetic hug. I dug my nails hard into my flesh, enough for it to sting harder than the separation. Weak and beaten, I doubled over, my chest caving with every rapid heave. 

An abrupt gust of wind whipped past his face, slapping locks of dark hair back against his ears. 

In that split second, a tiny spark lit up inside me. 

And was immediately put out.

His brows furrowed as he threw his head back. A humorless laugh sawed from his chest. He splayed his arms out hopelessly. “Is this your way of trying to talk to me?” he croaked out.

“Yes! I am!” I pounded a palm against my chest, floating inches away from him now. “I swear I am!”

He let out a long exhale, creating a plume of fog against the already hazy air. His eyes bored into my gravestone once more, hands shoved into his slacks. 

“It should’ve been me,” he muttered.

No. God no, it shouldn’t have. 

“Please don’t say that,” I begged to no one.

I was selfish for hoping he’d been buried next to me when I should’ve been hoping he was alive at all.

Another blast of wind blew around him, and that alone was enough to knock him to his knees. For a while, he knelt there, letting the silence blanket over the graveyard as it once had before.

“You know,” He settled into a criss cross. “I got you something.” 

His fingers slid into the inner pocket of his suit, pulling out a grouping of small wildflowers. They were tightly bound by a few blades of grass—more than enough.

“I know you liked it more when I picked them myself, for some reason, even if I don’t do great with aesthetics and all that. But I tried my best.” 

He set them down silently at my feet as he straightened his suit. Lifting a fist to his mouth, he cleared his throat. “I made sure to include both red and purple flowers in there. Our colors, you know.” His voice broke ever so slightly, but he continued. “Make fun of me all you want for being corny but…I had to.”

I clasped a hand over my mouth, my shoulders shaking wildly.

I’m not sure why I was covering my mouth; nobody could even hear nor see my agony. Yet stupid and senseless as it was, a part of me hoped he would be able to just…know. Simply because it was him.

I liked to think he could, as he didn’t leave for the remainder of the day. Whether to comfort me or himself, I was uncertain.

Each day that followed, he’d come back in a worse state, tending more to a grave than he would to himself. 

He’d lie by my new and grassy bed, whisper sweet nothings, reflect on what should’ve been our wedding night, our honeymoon, our lives. Occasionally, he’d scrub some moss off my headstone as I rested my head on his shoulders—well, floated above his shoulders.

I hated to say it, but there was nothing more I could do. No matter how many times I stripped my vocal chords raw from pleading for him to take care of himself, the most I would elicit was another breath of wind.

And one morning as he lay beside me, he didn’t open his eyes again. 

This time around, my hands flew to my eyes. I sat with my back facing him, head dropped to my knees. But when the gravediggers came for him later, at least they did their job; they buried him next to me. 

The first thing he did when saw me—other than tangle us into an embrace and slant mouths—was slide off my engagement ring. He got down on a knee beside our headstones and proposed a second time. 

After my initial sob-filled lecture to him about taking better care of himself, I said yes, as did the red and purple wildflowers that grew especially feral around our beds after our little ceremony. 

I ensured the flowers around his grave were taken extremely good care of each day, and advised him to look after them the same. He always watched over my flowers in the past, but never his own. It would’ve been a shame, really, they were such beautiful flowers too. 

Soon he’d see their beauty, and once he did, our eternal rest would be earned at last. 

I knew I could trust those gravediggers.