The cherry blossoms - Part 1, Chapter 1

She's running away, and the cherry blossoms are for it.

It had been a while since the cherry blossoms crammed into each other coyly, white hearts on hearts, pink kisses on kisses, tiny pastel mouths puckered out like chicks waiting for mama sunshine to bring food to their nests.

Hand-sewn on the tips of branches, hugged together at the base, cherry blossoms fluttering in corners all around town, giggling and judging the modern folk out and about, and dragging me in on the jokes.

And it had been a while since the sunshine made anything sparkle and shapeshift, especially the foliage, which in May curled so fresh and plentiful, overfilled the streets, lounged on fences, stole the spotlight of our very best buildings, clambered on the sky like ivy on a round Victorian ceiling, as if it was the town, and our streets and homes and shiny cars and baroque lampposts were pretty decorations.

Sunny green bulged into my eyes making my eyelids wide and bursting, filling up my irises to the brim and overflowing into me a wish to play around naked, to move smilingly with life, to indulge without judgement into long sentences, to bite on oranges with the wholeness of my mouth and to touch everything there is.

In my mind, it had been such a long while that I felt ashamed glaring at it now, so piercingly aware of the car window that kept me in my place, away from it, so very safe and alone. The green looked away from me and rustled moodily. The cherry blossoms were quiet and shaded and I wondered what they must have thought of me now.

I had fucked up. Severely. I'd severed myself from the root of my very wish to be and now had to renounce it, renounce my worship of life to serve something too many people must: the system, of course. It's always some system or another, but this one was even crueller as it had, at its very peak, in the very elite ranks that drove it forward towards life, my future husband. The man I am supposed to marry, although my entire being craves to run away on the other side of the world, to live with the others, the Forgotten. What a dramatic and wonderful name they have. I want to become Forgotten, now wouldn't that be just the best. To stay and live and bloom and whither with the greenery and the blossoms every season. Away from any system or inkling of a system. Although my mind assures me there's a system there, too. And I'd much rather avoid that altogether.

He asked me why I was biting my nails again.

I hid my fingers inside a tight fist and shrugged. 'Just thinking about being human, I suppose'.

'Ah, the monkey brain at play. Only your mind could chew idly on archaic concepts like philosophy. I mean, don't misunderstand me, I do love your depth. I think you can make great things when you direct the kinetics of your thoughts. Marvelous, even'

The wind blew out an entire tribe of cherry blossoms across the street, allowing them for a second to float in the backdrop of his calm gaze, as if he had the key to the entire peace of the world. I sat quietly. The knot in my throat, the pump in my stomach, the water swelling behind the frail harbour of my lower lid were sure signs that I'd finally decided. I was running away that night.