The Flower and The Bee by Lorraine Wilson

     Rick Harris CC



The Flower and The Bee

    We watch the open window, falling sunlight, a red flower and an amber bee. This is just the start. Remember that. This is Venus raining diamonds above the black horizon in a damson sky. You have begun to breath the sea and your skin is a map of evenings and the moon will always rise, remember that. When my hand shakes with trying not to hold yours too hard, when we hold our breaths between words because this word, or this word, or this one. They are each a starfall and a broken bone. When I comb the spidersilk of your hair to help you relearn how to smile, we know they are lies and truths and that strange, heroic kindness going the wrong way. Remember this.
    I will lay photographs at your feet, scatter a lifetime geometry and we will marvel at it all. At the miles, the tiny endless joys. We will marvel at these too, the faces that are only there, in those pixels, and this is just the start, we will think. This is the space between the flower and the bee, we rush towards it dancing, and then we must find our way home. Come home, with memories of flowers to last your family through the winter, to give your children the taste of flight. This is the beginning.
    I will make your tea with too much sugar, and you will remind me to eat, and all the time we are echoes of ourselves, all our past selves. And this. We are echoes of each other’s selves. I am your echo, I will speak your words when you cannot, I will find your footsteps and follow them, I will trace your bones in my children. This is just the start.
    Rest now, you will need your beauty’s sleep. There are so many things we leave unsaid, but it is no sin, no shame. We will speak when you awake, if you wish, if you do. And I will sing. If you wish. And this breath is a gift, and this one, and this. And if I trace each line, each bone, it is to hold your echoes. It is to carry you home.

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Having spent many years working in remote corners of the world, Lorraine now lives by the sea in Scotland and write stories that are touched by folklore and the wilderness. Her short stories have been published in several anthologies. She tweets @raine_clouds about science, writing, cats and weirdnesses

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