Flowers of Winter

There was a grave with Ruskin’s name on it, and Roo’s heart ached too much to face it. She barely remembered attending the funeral, as if the memory was too painful to keep. She thought back to that day but all she could see was her forgotten self in a black dress. Some moments still she believe he was there with her, alive, but they were only painful memories she wished they could make together. She thought of all the things they would have done, could have become. These lost memories haunted Roo, turned her days into nightmares.

She sat outside the grave yard, but she did not enter the grounds. Half an hour’s worth of tears rolled down her cheek until she decided to go for a walk. There was a walking track that many runners and dog owners used that ran around one side of the graveyard. Roo looked on at the graves as she passed. Grave after grave after grace. So many bodies, so many dead. One of them was Ruskin. Her Ruskin. Ruskin with his chocolate milkshake curls and bubbling lips. Roo found herself back at her car, lost and alone. She wanted so desperately to be with him, but too afraid to visit his grave. Part of her even wanted to hold his body again, even in its dead state. She imagined him shivering in his grave, cold and blue and eager for Roo’s warm embrace to heat him up. Roo climbed into her car.

“I love you Ruskin” were the words she whispered before she drove off.