There are some days where I sit to remember the dreams I fantasticated as a small youth. The young me, dressed in a muddy dress, wild, and unmoored from the weakening dirt that reduced to dust from the trampling of my proudfoot. My hair, flowing energetically with its coffee brown radiance and silky-to-the-touch texture, mocking the flowing and bending of the tall grass that watched its wavering freedom and glory similar to the American flag. There was an surging infinity that existed like the California Gold Rush; an infinity that sifted away to who knows where. The more I tossed my destiny in the pan the more the sand and time drifted away until all I had possession of were small stones. No gold. No ancient relics. Up to this point, from all the shaking and thrusting, I wonder what I had done in the past to deserve this unpleasant present.

    Now, the grass is all gone and the Appalachian scenery has been erased and replaced by a small flower boutique shop. I’ve lost my precious youth. Married, but losing the connection he and I once had. By now, our bond is upheld by slowly migrating words and promises that can’t take the cold and desolation in our globe. There's no love in what we do. There’s no despair, no joy, no anger, no comfort, no change, no anything. There’s just longing; a longing for a chance to bend the iron bars of our marital cage to escape and hear the music playing elsewhere in the world. Compared to my youth, this place is a white brumal plain, once a field of colorful flowers. But the flowers have withered from the force of seasonal downturn and only the chirping of winter birds can bring hope to the crestfallen ear.

    It's 6:00 am right now. We our hours don’t being until 8:00 pm. I open the doors and the heat escapes from the store’s captivity to desperately mingle with the cool free air. The bells chime as the doors tease them with their high-fives. I step out to smell the early festivities and all I heard were moody blues that filled the waking sky. My eyes shut to give focus to my ears and I listened. I listened for the daily-breaders that drove through the busy-scented world. Tires from nearby cars grumbled on the road like King Sisyphus continuing on with his eternal punishment. My eyes open once more and I turned to stare at the door that separated him from me. My swollen heart beats for the past to come alive to give one final waltz with the girl who’s now forlorn. Slowly, my heart molded the image of us when we both could still suspend in mid-air as rulers of space and gravity. A time where even time was timeless as we frolicked like naive deer through the green meadows and into the mysteriously enticing forest where we came out "grown up."

    But the images of us deliquesced as my mind felt the beckoning of the present. All the days, months, and years it slaughtered to move on left behind a red-soaked carpet-stained path we call the past. The colors, gruesome, and more distracting than the possibilities of the future. The lucky-cat clock that hung over us ticked and tocked with a permanent godly gaze. The dark oval eyes jerked back and forth in a pendulum motion and my mauve soul couldn't help but let out a bowing sigh. I'm afraid... No. I’ve accepted that we no longer flew like we did back then. Now we were grounded by reality and slowly cycled through repetitive days, stuck on the handles of the clock. He sat there with more space on the longer hand while I clung on to the shorter one.

    Unnerving as it is, I find it difficult to leave this place behind. I find no good justification to leave a man who tried to give me everything he wanted me to have. There were good intentions but my wings are clipped. I have no happiness here. Every day, I face an intrapersonal argument that goes on between my desires and my fairness. I don’t know what to do. Valentina, what is the right thing to do? A question that I want answered immediately. A truth I know. The consequences a mystery.

    An involuntary sigh let out as I went back inside to prepare the lights. I turn on the automatic sprinklers that spray mist now and then to keep the flowers moist and the air humid. The set of marigolds always catches my eye as I know their meanings. It is currently my flower. Its natural colors express vibrance but its upside down tarot card does not agree with its portrayed joy. I want to flip it back upside. I need to make a change. I promised to never let the past steer the directions of my fate. The current course will not lead to a treasure island but to a creeping glacier that will bring but an abyssal sorrow. The press for action is still pending. I have to gather courage in order to face the inevitable one.