Burning Wishes

Dandelions. Flowers said to be able to grant wishes. Something every kid has tried. I know that because I’m one of them. My name is Summer Raine, and this is my story of why I burn dandelions.

When I was young, just a little under five, my parents would always fight, it didn’t matter what it was. They just had to fight about it. During that time we were living on a small farm out in Ohio, and I was green with envy as my older siblings managed to escape every time a fight broke out because they were older. I was the baby at the time as my younger brother and sisters had yet to be born at the time, so I could only go as far at the front yard. While my older sister and brother could go further away freeing themselves of the hateful words scream from one parent to the other. But I digress, the point was I spent as much time as I could out side, just so the yelling wouldn’t seem as loud, and with nothing to do except pick the tiny yellow flowers thinking how pretty they seemed to my child self.

I remember smiling every time I yanked one from the ground to smell it. It faded though when in comparison to the same plant except with white fluffy seeds than sunny yellow petals. I heard from everyone that if you could make a wish on the fluffy seedlings it was bound to come true. And so, I wished.

I didn’t wish for a pony the way my sister would have, or for it to be cold all year long like my brother. I wished that my parents would stop fighting. I wished that we could all be one big happy family. For no more tears to be shed at night, because I was terrified that the fighting would break out again. For no more sirens to pierce the midnight black sky. That the images of the police trying to take away my daddy for something he didn’t do would disappear with the flower‘s seeds. After all my daddy was a good daddy, it was mommy that caused all the problems…

The fighting did stop, but not the way I had hopped. My mother had finally packed us all up in the car and drove away, without my father. At the time I though my wish was to hard for the little dandelions to make it come true for me.

We then moved to Virginia, my father coming to see us when he could, but not without a few bitter words between the two adults. It was on my eleventh birthday that I last saw my dad. It wasn’t even a proper good-bye. By that time I know there was no magic in the dandelions to make wishes come true, but I couldn’t help myself, for the next several years, any chance I got, I would pluck a snowy feathered dandelion and make a simply wish, for my dad to just come and see me. I missed him so much. I hadn’t even gotten a card for my birthday or anything. I tried though, I sent him calls, and letters, emails, and everything but he never returned any of them. And once again I began to give up hope, feeling foolish to have believed in dandelion magic.

But I fool myself even more than the dandelions ever could because somehow, someway there is still apart of me that believes if I just make a simpler wish or something of the sort it’ll come true.

It wasn’t until many, many years later did I finally hear from my father. He was dying. Just like before, when I was a child, a teen, and now an adult. I tried to hold onto the small part of myself that believed if I just wished harder enough, enough times it would come true. My father would be free from his sickness and could keep on living. I even promised never to make a wish again if the magic could just grant me this once thing.

I didn’t want to lose my father even after everything that happened because I was a ‘Daddy’s girl’. I always was and I always would be. Even after he died…

I never did get to see my father again. The man who had help create me, raise me, and ultimate abandoned me, died, before I could ever see him again. It’s the dandelions’ fault… I know it’s irrational to blame it on a plant, but I did, I completely blamed it on that stupid, stupid weed that couldn’t grant me a single wish I asked for. It could for my sister and brother, but for me? All no it couldn’t. I just asked to keep my family together happily, to let me talk to my dad again, to not take him from me. I never asked for a pony or for freezing temperatures all year long.

I feel myself slowly slipping away from this world. Into one of pure madness, but I don’t mind anymore. The magic is all gone, I have nothing holding me in place any more. I want to see it burn…

It’s midnight in the open field. The stars shine brightly, but not as bright as the moon still. I hold a small lighter in my hand. I bend down and pick one of the millions if not billions of dandelions. I hold it loosely in my hand and spin it. Not hard enough for the feathers to go flying off, though. I smile and blow before I set it on fire with the lighter.

For some reason that made me feel better. People say that crying helped them, but it never did for me. But this did. Setting dandelions on fire was my form of crying. I quickly lit another one, feeling better than I had in years. I didn’t have to worry about a wild fire though; it had been raining again just the other day. Watching the white fluffy glow that orange-y, red color as the flames licked it was addicting.

For ever wish I ever made with a dandelion, I planned to burn one, but then I started to wonder…what about everyone else? What about all the other people who made a wish on a dandelion and it didn’t come true? I decided to cry their tears for them. I would set alight each and ever one of these dandelions to set free the unshed tears built up over the hundreds of years for people who had never had a wish come true when they had made a wish on a dandelion. I will burn all of these ungranted wishes. All of them would burn…and maybe, just maybe this haunting madness of mine will cease to be.

I am Summer Raine, and I destroy wishes burn wishes.