• The Glass

    Empty. All of the water had evaporated already. How long had it been since the night she died? Two months. Right.
    “Oh Ellie…”
    I was trying to summon up the image of my daughter. The exact way her hair had waved, like honey dripping into the tea she always loved to drink. That was the color of her skin too. Tanned, glistening.
    Until she got so sick that her skin took on that pallor, when she lost her glow. She was so pretty. Even on her death bed, she still had that smile of hers. It was her mother’s smile. But even she wasn’t home right now. She wasn’t here to hold me and tell me that she was alright, that Ellie was happy wherever she was.
    I sighed. The glass always had some kind of flower in it. Ellie had made sure of that. Every day of the week, of every month of every year for three years. One flower.
    Now it was empty. I was empty.
    “I miss you so much,” I cried. Slowly, it turned into a slight giggle. A sad, pitiful giggle, but my first in so long. “ Look at me. I’m a forty-five year old man and I’m sobbing like a baby. If you were here, you’d slap me upside the head for this, and tell me to stop whining.” My laughter turned hysterical. “I wish you were here.”
    I cried silently after that. Drip, drop. Drip, drop. My tears dropped on the plain wood table, turning the light pine wood dark. “Where are you now, Ellie? I just… I need to know. Please—”
    There was knock on the door.
    Pushing my dark brown hair back from my sweaty forehead, and rubbing all of the saline off my cheeks, I put on a strong face and went to answer it.
    Upon opening the door, I found that there was no one outside. I looked around, looking for who had knocked. For whatever reason, it was just reflex I guess, I looked down onto the cheery, “Welcome Home!” mat. There was a… a tulip, with a card on it.
    In delicate script that I knew well, it said “Always.”
    The tulip meant new hope, I knew that after living with two botanists. She followed in her mother’s footsteps, had she loved learning about the meaning of plants. And she’d delighted herself in telling me everything that she learned. And I worked hard to remember it all.
    It was blue, her favorite color.
    I looked up into the sky, the clouds parting to display a bright blue sky, the same color as the tulip.
    “Thank you Ellie.”