The Hill

The wind blows, carrying pollen with it like a father carries his children. The field is a tapestry of colors, vibrant reds and deep blues, startling yellows with a tinge of green, glowing pink mixed with hard purple. Sunshine Park, aptly named, glows after the life-giving rainfall. There’s nothing I love more than a summer thunderstorm, and this one perked up the only place I’ve been able to call home since my mother died when I was young. I started coming here after Marisa, the most beautiful girl I ever dated, left me. Each year, I come here and plant a new group of flowers for Marisa, and I will do so until this hill is covered in them. Call me a crazy ex, a deluded eighteen year old with no concept of love. God knows she has. Except she called me a deluded fifteen year old. Whatever, I don’t care, I did love her. Something broke inside of me the day she left, arms linked with another guy.

“It’s not you, I promise,” she said, “I just don’t see us being together. I don’t feel the same way I used to about you. I hope you can understand.”

I think it’s that last sentence that broke me. To this day, I still don’t understand. I never cheated, I never hit her, I never did anything wrong. Like a house of cards, it just fell apart.

I don’t know why I still come to this park. I have moved on of course, feelings do fade. These flowers aren’t for her anymore, not really. I think they are actually for me, a kind of memorial for the love I thought I had. It’s not a very big hill, but it is in a clearing in the middle of a bunch of dead looking pines. The color of the flowers gives it a charming glow, and grants me serenity while I work. Nearby, a small stream flows along a pebble filled path, and eventually empties into Sunshine Lake. Once, I actually saw a black bear cub drink from that stream. But he didn’t touch my flowers. Nothing in the forest seems to touch them, which lets them grow. I suppose I’m grateful to the forest for that.

With my knees in the dirt at the base of the hill, I begin to dig small troughs for this year’s flower. I’ve picked a lovely blood red poppy to fill the final barren spot on my hill. I am so engulfed in my work that I almost miss her footsteps on the fallen needles behind me. Thin and graceful, Emilia saunters up beside me and places a soft hand on my shoulder before bending over to peck my cheek. Her hair, which smells like the lilacs at the front of my hill, falls across my face as she does so. I breathe her in, smiling as she kneels next to me. We’ve been dating for a year. With gloves on her small hands, she begins to help me dig.

“Not too deep,” I warn her, “you don’t want these poppies to be buried.”

“I know, no need to remind me for the millionth time.”

I see the hint of a smile on her lips, which draws a full smile from me.

“Sorry, I just need this hill to be perfectly beautiful.”

“It’s really more of mound.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see her grin at her own joke. The grin turns into a laugh, one of the sweetest and lightest laughs I’ve ever heard.

“I’m just messing around. You know, you’ve never told me why you plant these flowers.”

“I like to see beauty in the world.”

“Okay Mr. Poet, why do you really plant them?”

I pause. The sound of happy bird songs and rustling tree branches overwhelms me, and I close my eyes. I take a deep breathe, look her in the eyes, and say “They remind me of someone who I would rather not forget.”

Assuming I mean my mother, she leans in and kisses me.

“You’re such a sweetie. I love you.”

I wonder if she knows the last girl to say that to me is inches under these new poppies, buried beneath my hill.

"I love you too," I say with a grin, "Forever."