By JENNIFER CUI
It was night. The bust was finished.
I sat on the floor, drained.
Copies of the newspaper article scattered around me.
The last part to this piece was the flower gown, made from real flowers. I delayed this for as long as I could, afraid of what was to come.
His figure looked everso quiet; inspecting, without accusation, and without affection.
The day I deemed myself a successful artist was the day I was able to make him gaze back at me through chalk on paper. At that moment, I seemed to smell the fields from home, nearly mistaking the patches of light pooled on the floor for those primrose petals.
Memory of the pencil portrait merged with the bust standing in front of me now, alabaster, white as snow. I reached out and touched the bridge of his nose, then the corner of his eyes, lightly, as if the heat of my hands would melt him away.
Perhaps, I gripped too hard when he helped me onto his back that night.
“I…”
A choking feeling rose up my chest and I doubled over. The pain, familiar and stinging, expanded in my chest and crawled up my windpipes. It didn’t use to be this bad.
It was an unsuspecting night when this sickness developed. I was in the library basement, going through catalogs of old newspapers for inspiration. It was dark, and silent except for the flapping of newspapers, and then suddenly, there was his face on the cover of a local newspaper. The same face I had been drawing, painting, sculpting for the past nine years, never once saw again except for in my dreams. My breath caught. Insanity it was. Nine years I spent chasing, grasping vague memories of him and all of a sudden, I had him in my hands.
So, this is what he looked like. I had his eyes slightly too big, and his cheekbones a little too sharp. But beautiful, princely all the same. He hadn’t changed a bit.
He hadn’t changed a bit…oh god, he looked the same as nine years ago.
I flipped to the date of the publication… Nine years, two weeks, three days from the day we met. Then, I saw the headline.
For a second, I felt nothing. Just words, words, words. Then the newspaper hit the floor, and everything rushed up my mind — the wind, the primrose petals in the air, dead, his figure by the barn door, fields behind him, my twisted ankle, his offering hand, me on his back, suicide, his broad shoulders, his hand on my legs, supporting my weight, he died, his smile, died, his hand on my head, gently patting, bullet through the head, suicide nine years ago, get home safe, little girl… I couldn’t stop the shaking, stop, stop, stop—
I was seized by a coughing fit. There was a growing tightness in my chest; something was stretching out of my trachea, it pushed and clawed and forced down my tongue. I gagged and tasted bile in my mouth… the room was spinning. Collapsed on the library basement floor, I felt a softness against the rim of my mouth. The growing heaviness in my chest dulled, and was replaced by an utter horror as I watched a delicate, purple flower blossom out of my mouth.
Before then, I didn’t want to acknowledge my feelings. I hid away the catch of the breath, the race of the heart, the electric charges in the tips of my fingers. Not yet, wait a little longer, until you are better at your craft, wait, until you could capture his perfection, wait some more.
All for nothing.
Nothing.
Fucking nothing, nothing, because he killed himself that night by the riverside. His patience with you was him using his last remaining time, his warmth, the strength of his arms, his dimples and the curves of his eyes all turned to nothing but the aching in my lungs.
I love you, I love you… I said it again and again to his bust, obsessively. Flowers pushed down my tongue and blossomed one after the other. I scrambled for scissors, and with messy attempts, cut at the stems. They dropped, and I held them, small fireworks in the palm of my hands. The root was withering into an ashened, bitter taste in my mouth.
I took the prepared needle and thread, and the mesh for the gown, picked up a purple one and then, with still shaking hands, stabbed the needle through its stem. One by one the flowers were fixed onto the mesh. What a shame that their delicate, fine lines were blurred through my tears into watercolour.
It hurt.
It hurt, it hurt so much…
But, I had flipped my own hourglass nine years ago, and now there was no going back.
There he was, his eyes gentle and his lips curled into that smile. My love, my fields. I’ve loved you for nine years and I’ll love you for nine more. My chest burned, my lungs were about to burst, my mouth was sore, my hands hurt from all the cutting and sewing and my eyes were blinded and yet, and yet…
Wind rose, and leaves scraped the ceiling window.
The gown was complete.
With last remaining strength, I threw the mesh around the bust. There he stood. Sacred, beautiful, at peace.
I leaned in slowly. Forgive me for the impudence, but I really want to feel the shape of your lips, my creation.
Cotton dress. Fields of flowers. Gun, hidden in the pocket.
Forgive me. I didn’t know…
In the end, I only placed my forehead against his.
The flowers enveloped us in their blossoms. I spotted a few primroses and whispered for them to rest on his chest, just above his heart.
They would blossom until we were covered, and afterwards, they too, would wither.
But I won’t be there to witness this; their death, all that wilting, all the decay, I will see none of that.
So the flowers will blossom forever.
Writer | Jennifer Cui ’28 | jcui28@amherst.edu
Editor | Mariam Beshidze ’27 | mbeshidze27@amherst.edu