Paria Shahir (9) | STAFF REPORTER
She climbed up the hill alone. During her ascent, her eyes roamed in search of the white poppies. She plucked each one she found by its delicate sprig, as others flailed with the breeze around her. Once she had gathered a basket full of pearl-white flowers, she sat down under the flourishing cherry tree on top of the hill, from where the entire town with all its vibrancy was visible.
She settled under the shade and began to write, addressing her love, who was entangled in the chaos of the battlefield somewhere remote. She wrote of love, of the longing to cry in his arms. She rendered her heart in words, speaking of the town news, the apple pie that had filled the house with its scent that morning, and of spring.
She had observed the arrival of spring that morning, and wished to share it with her love. She wrote of the blossoms’ return, of how nature so subtly displays its reserved essence—how a miracle unfolds softly and with quiet grace. She regarded the blossoms with ardent admiration, for they hadn’t yet emerged the night before; she could vividly recall the bare figs. They appeared right when winter finally retreated, unexpectedly bursting into view on a routinely glimpse out the window, and stirring within her the breathless anticipation for spring to be reborn the following year.
It certainly made the young woman doubt that her love would ever return; that their final shared encounter with spring’s advent had occurred and simmered into the air long ago.
Of course, she omitted these notions while writing, suggesting instead that these events boded a new and hopeful beginning for the couple and both rival armies. And with that, she sealed the letter, and fastened the poppies most teeming with life to the envelope with a thread.
A bloodstained poppy had been drifting across the bleak, snowy garden all morning.
I wonder if it was my love’s farewell last spring that emanated from the soil and sprouted on the trees at my window.
I wonder if it’s my love’s blood that’s been nurturing the flower through winter. I wonder if spring will ever return.
