Elizabeth

Source: http://brianabbott.net/photos/2012/11/11/macro-weekend

Not even the sun assists the sunflower when she seeks sanctuary in a world that will only continue to fail her. Innocence shines out of her smile – unsuitable positivity for a person whose life is far from perfect. And behind the smile? I didn’t concern myself with the answer to this question for she was below my eye line, or so I thought.

Where is she now? I don’t know. I didn’t care until I was reminded of her existence, eight years after forgetting. Looking back, reminiscent of the journey from which I came, I remember her. Few people do until they delve deep into the ignorance of their self-absorbed minds and when they do find her, they find her sitting in a dark corner wrapped in cobwebs, behind uneasy experiences and rainy afternoons, behind memories you have to remind yourself to forget and behind ones that you don’t.

And when you finally displace everything in the way so that you get a glimpse of her you are filled with guilt and worry, because who knows what happened to her while you were gone? I should have been there, I should have protected her. If there was a demise at all, I contributed to it. Anxiety closes in, my head filled with questions that I can’t ask and so will never be answered. It’s terrifying how my complete ignorance has been so indefinitely invaded by all-pervading feelings of guilt, consuming and ruining what I now see was an oblivious paradise. The guilt I feel because I laughed at the sunflower’s unkempt hair, I laughed at her dishevelled clothes and I laughed when they called her names and plucked off her petals and it was ok because she laughed too.

She laughed so it’s ok. Repeat. Repeat. But I can’t repeat for much longer as with each child that plucks a delicate petal from her sore head, I envisage her suffering until there are no petals left and when they are gone, what happens then? Perhaps she wilts and dies, she rots away being eaten by mice and birds until there is nothing left. No sunflower, no memory, no pain. No one cares that this sunflower died, no one ever has, worst of all the sun.

But the way in which I contributed was not direct. I did not pick her petals off of her, I did not stamp on her in my Mary Janes in an act of malevolence, and I did not ridicule her for not being like the others. I painted a picture and she wasn’t in it. I painted the grass and the sun, I painted the children sat around her and yet I did not paint her despite the fact that I knew she was there.

She was an unusual flower, dirty with black stains and when I approached her to introduce her to my other senses, I held my breath to stop the unfamiliar stench of cigarettes from filling my lungs. Not only was she an ugly, unloved flower, her sweet smell had gone – I didn’t want to look after her or restore her back to full health, it was best to ignore her.

My questions could start here. Did the gardener who planted her ever come back to see if she was well? Did the children pluck off her petals until there were none left? Did they choose to leave her to decease and decay? Is she still alive – ugly with a foul smell? Or perhaps she bloomed, the sun shining on her to restore her petals, a kind hand watering her to relieve her from the agonising heat she had grown to uneasily tolerate.

Because while the oxygen in my lungs has never failed and with an undeniable flame in my heart, I have prospered from the goodness of the earth and the kindness of the water fed to me since birth. I am not lucky, this is merely what I need to live. Those four same friends who should also have been hers excluded and damaged her, leaving her without the essential elements she needed to survive.

Unlike me, they laughed when they knew her laugh was false. They purposefully spat on her and crushed her under their feet when they should have been fundamental to protect her. The Earth and the people on it refused to take care of her as soon as her seed was planted and I don’t know if anyone ever did. For the years that I knew her, all I have is her first name, the realisation that she was neglected and I did nothing to relieve her.