#status: third draft

[fatedwritings]

I kept my garden small: black pansies and white marigolds. It looked like everyone else's, but the flowers didn't grow. The pink and purple orchids paired well with the delphinium I secretly planted next to not garner attention. Foolishly, I let them die. Again, I planted the black pansies along with silver ragwort, white poppies, and purple irises, and for years, this garden flourished. But, I missed the smell of the pink orchids, and the rich blue petals of the delphiniums. Curious if they would grow, I replanted them both and added yellow tulips between them, rearranging the pansies, ragwort, poppies, and irises as well. I can't be sure if this will be my final garden. They say sexuality is fluid, so I'll water my flowers and see what grows.

[fatedwritings]

The girl of my dreams was the summer. Her lips against mine were the ocean meeting the shore, crashing into carefully crafted sandcastles that crumbled in her wake. Our clothes fell with the shells that washed ashore from the rising and falling waves. Every breath of salt air, I yearned for her to steal. The breeze of her caresses warmed wherever she touched. I only hoped mine were the same. I craved her. I longed to drown in her. As I sank to her ocean floor, the pearls in my teeth glistened. Alas, the only memory I have of her as I wake next to him, shivering from the winter snow, is the salt on my reddened cheeks.

[fatedwritings]

I did not realize I was caged until I tried to leave. I did not recognize these iron bars, nor the lock on the door. When was I put in a cage? I do not understand. Even more, I couldn't move my wings. I could not move my wings. I. Could not. Move. My. Wings. When were my wings clipped? I do not understand. Alas, I do the only thing I know how: I cry for help. All I hear in return is silence. When was I trapped here? Forsaken in a dusty cage with rusting bars I cannot bend because my wings are clipped? I do not understand. My throat hurts from screeching, a once melodic voice regaled for singing rendered raw. Beautiful feathers—royal blue, reddish brown, and white—fell around me. Had I not been happy once? With joyful trills? Able to soar on a daytime breeze? Only then, as my throat bled, and I lied at the bottom of this cage, did I realize that was why you captured me in the first place.

[fatedwritings]

I admired the girls with hair like California. Strong as Redwood trees, never a strand out of place, and the same every day. Mine lacked that beauty basking in the sunshine. It never did as it was told, temperamental as the ocean off the Cape. Thin as the coast of New Hampshire, but wild like the forests of Maine and jagged like the mountains of Vermont. A chickadee's nest next to luscious, pin-straight locks, I was as small as Rhode Island and forgotten like Connecticut. What was I to do but make my hair like theirs? More and more heat to forget the winters and tame the wild, I pretended I was one of them. I had to be. Sometimes, I wonder if anyone ever figured it out.