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A quiet squeak.
The cab parked at the side of the road and a young woman got out. She adjusted her ponytail turned back to the cab and grabbed a bouquet.
“Thank you very much”, she said to the driver and closed the door. The cab took off and the woman stood there all alone now, the bouquet of roses in her hand. She looked around, went trough a high, black gate and walked with low heels along the paths.
The grass on the sides looked fresh. No wonder, she thought. The weather was nice. The sun was shining, sky was blue, it was warm. Across the lawn two gardeners stood talking to each other.
She walked down the path. She knew it was the right one. But she didn’t know anymore which of the many gravestones it was. Briefly she looked at every single one, read the names. Few of them were decorated with flowers, candles and personal things, others were not. They looked empty, not taken care of. No memory seemed to be with the names on them.
Sad, she thought.
But then she read a familiar name. She stopped. That one she knew.
This was the one she was searching for. It was empty as well, without any memory on it. Nobody seemed to have thought about this person.
She smiled and knelt in front of this name. The curved letters in black on gray stone.
“Hey, Divine”, she whispered, clutching the bouquet more tightly. “I don’t know why I didn’t visit you earlier, I can’t explain it to you. I… I wasn’t afraid, I just wasn’t sure about some things, I’d say.”
Now she sat down on her legs. It would take a while to say all of her thoughts out loud.
She sighed, searched for a beginning. All of a sudden she felt kind of… nervous.
“It stunned me a bit realizing it’s already been eleven years. So I thought it was time to finally visit you and have a chat with you. I.. I bought roses on purpose. Thought they have a deeper meaning to the both of us. Have you ever plucked petals of a rose before?”
Silence. She smiled again. “You get it once you pluck every petal by once, separating them from the rest of the rose. Well, at least I have. The… The big ones, the outer ones you see, they fall just from a slight touch. But the smaller the petal, the more difficult it is to separate it. Until you notice, there’s a whole new bud underneath it.”
She looked around, wanted to be sure, no one was around.
Nobody was to be seen.
So she looked back at the name. “This bud is so hidden underneath all this big petals. And there are a lot of petals on one rose. But this small, hidden petals beneath them are so much more. It’s fascinating.” And again she paused, chose silence to search for more words. She didn’t know how to continue. “I… I am 28 now. I’ve learned a lot in this time. I now know, nobody knew at that time, that something was not right. Or… Why I’m different. Nobody understood and I can’t even be mad, I didn’t understand either. I think we all made mistakes. My parents, but me, too. But… it’s nothing I could change.” She took a deep breath. Out of nothing she felt tears in the corner of her eyes.
But she tried to stay strong.
“I think you did a lot of things wrong as well. But now... it’s okay, you weren’t perfect. I’m just so disappointed you lied to me, it didn’t just hurt, it… it still makes me so fucking angry. And I wish I could slap you in your face for all of this and I know you deserve it. But.. I don’t know if that makes you a bad person. Nonetheless you were the first one to accept me and the first one to understand me and you were there for me in some way. Every time it got bad again, you were there and helped me.”
She took the roses in one hand and with the other drew a napkin out of her pocket. “I can’t believe it”, she sobbed. “I didn’t cry the last years. I was just sad and angry, but this is the first time I’m crying. This can’t be true.”
She wiped her tears away, sniffed and took a deep breath.
The gravestone didn’t reply or move, but how should it? Silent it stood there, without a movement.
She stared at it, closed her eyes just to look up into the sky. The cloudless, blue sky. The napkin disappeared in her fist. “I’m sorry”, she whispered, paused again. But then she spoke more firmly. “It is true, you understood me in a way, nobody else did. And it still hurts so fucking much knowing you used all of it. You used this knowledge and though…”
She hid her face, didn’t want him to see her like this. But then she laughed and looked back up. “I can’t believe it, you used me, you just used me as a weapon, as a tool, I was so meaningless to you as a person and you can’t even comprehend how much that hurts! And I still fucking miss you!”
She lost the fight with her tears. She didn’t know how to defeat them anymore. She laughed, sniffed. “You saw everything from the very beginning Through you I understood, who I really was, what’s going on with me. I don’t even know, if I would be here if it wasn’t for you finding me in the alley back then. Although I don’t even know if you found me or if you had followed me, but… guess, I’ll never find that out. I…” She took another breath. “I have my parents and my friends, I love them all and I feel so loved. But… somehow, although it’s so fucking wrong, I still miss you, Divine.”
She paused again, let the silence take over for a while. She freed the white napkin to wipe away her tears and finally, she laid the roses down in her lap.
“You know what?”, she asked. “I had a few months time after it happened. I could have done so much to get over you, but I didn’t. I just wanted to do good, to undo all the bad things you did and help my friends. So I help people now and got new friends. I became a physician, a surgeon. And I decided to stay in Germany and… just live there. I’m just here, because a friend, you really don’t like, has his birthday and we planned a surprise for him, it’s his thirtieth after all. But ehm… I wanted to first have this little chat with you and… finally let go of all those thoughts. I really wanted to forget you, but it still doesn’t change how much you did for me, although you did it for all of the wrong reasons.”
Her next breath was heavy, deep. “Of course I grieved. All the time, I’m always thinking about you. But… I think, I’ve never realized it. How much of this wrong and how much I hate you through everything.”
She took out a new napkin. There was this feeling, she wanted to shake off as quickly as possible.
It was… shame. She felt ashamed. But she didn’t know what for. She looked at the bouquet, saddened. They looked so innocent in her lap. A smile got on her lips.
“Actually I love roses because of my parents, not you. You gave them just another meaning. You took something, what was already there and you used it once again.” She sighed. “It’s kind of subjective if roses are beautiful. Some think they’re great and the sign of love while other people hate them. They hate the thorns, it makes them dangerous. There are even people scared of roses. The petals are almost perfect most of the time, they’re like a case protecting the real perfection of a rose. All the small petals and buds underneath, they’re perfect the way they are. They show how big and gorgeous they can grow.”
Softly she laid the flowers in front of the stone. She felt glad, it looked so peaceful. So quiet and calm.
Again she sniffed. “Nobody ever saw those inner petals, not even you. But you did help me after all seeing them myself. I thank you for that, but I also want you to know that you’ll never deserve to see these inner petals. I’ll think about that a lot and I will never forget you. Although I wish, I could.”
Timidly, she got up, adjusted her skirt and put away the napkin. Silently, she folded her hands and closed her eyes.
For a while she just stood in front of this stone, not a word leaving her lips. Not even as she looked at his name again. She smiled, felt all the relief.
Finally, she told him everything, all her thoughts, which were tormenting her.
But they aren’t even the last ones, she thought. She removed her hair tie and let her hair fall down, revealing it’s true beauty.
“Like back then”, she whispered, sighed and turned around. She left the name and went back to the black gate, her exit. Knowing, this wasn’t the last time.