Everytime he closed his eyelids, he returned to her.

—He sighs and lets his eyelids fall shut again, letting the fragrance of summertime flowers engraved in the warm, quiet breeze of mid July envelop him.

It does not matter what happens when he opens them but rather the caliginous mantle of darkness that prevails amidst. When he closes his eyes, his vision is dyed in the hues of the past, the vibrant colours of spring; the magnificent splendour of flower fields; the previously encompassing darkness is blinded by her bright smiles and the redolent scent of flowers.

Flowers. They always took him back to her.

And she is always there, permanently etched in his eyes, tethered to his past, deathless and immortal in his memories. And no matter how many times he tries to pry her off, she always finds a way back like one of those pesky honeybees that never stop buzzing against his ears when the back of his head touches the grassblades.

She's a prison.

Because she has him wrapped around her finger. Because she has a presence that is absolutely impossible to ignore in a crowd of millions. Because she is the brightest star his eyes have ever caught. Because she is what everything in the universe revolves around now. Because she, she, she lives in his brain rent free.

Because she is so gorgeous it ignites his stomach every fucking time he sees her.

Even as a mere figment of his imagination.

She gets a little blurry sometimes when he gets too immersed in the daily grind of life, her blinding light flickers down to a dim woe registering merely a token glow in his chest. But every time he pauses to take a breath, every time he takes a halt and stands still to admire the momentary distractions in life, every time the bustling noise of chasing dreams gets quiet—

she comes alive again.

Bright and burning. Every time he pauses on his pathway to look at flowers; he sees her, vivid and clear. He hears the jingle of her laughter, feels the softness of her hand and the intoxicating glint of mischievous mercury in her eyes.

She was an arsonist, setting his body and soul aflame, igniting his senses until he was all ashes.

—she is there, burnt in his eyes even as he laid down, legs sprawled out on a patch of cool grass, sheltered by the shadow of an old gazebo. There was a vast green meadow in Hudson where he often found himself sulking. Sulking or reminiscing.

He kept his gaze fixed on the azure cloudy sky, inhaling the scent of all the flowers he did not the recall names of.

Funny how he could not name a single one of them now.

Although he did remember her telling him the names of all the flowers, from Lillies to petunias to chrysanthemums; she would always point at a random flower from her garden and tell him its name with a familiar energy and fervour in her voice.

And not to mention, her devoutness to flowers. It was amusing how she thought it was mandatory for her to impart this sacred knowledge upon his misguided soul.

And he would've remembered too—

He would've remembered all the names easily, afterall he was a great listener, that is, if he had paid attention in the first place.

If he had actually listened to what she was saying rather than admiring her eyes that glistened and shifted hues every time she talked about the things she loved.

His mind stopped working every time she did that.

And he couldn't really hear any of her plant gibberish because her eyes absolutely stole the spotlight of everything. They made everything else in the universe look faint and dull.

And he, like many, was a victim to her eyes.

Her eyes were glossy grey like liquid mercury dripping, filling the disjointed cracks between hoary pebbles at the bottom of a shallow murky lake; they shifted like constellations with every ripple. And every time starlight hit them, they looked tenebrous; like the sky on that February night they carelessly peered at while stargazing together, cozy under their blanket as the brightest star of the virgo constellation illuminated the dark unending canvas with an incredible fervour. Her eyes transformed colours, stealing hues of everything that was reflected from their crystal surface; that black singularity in the centre that engulfed absolutely everything around it, and I was no exception to the law of their gravity.

And in the very first glance she took his breath away.

And he remembers, even now, every single movement of her irises, the light that emanated from them.

His friend Steve always said that he was rather nonchalant, aloof even. It would sound absurd but he did understand his perspective. Because although he was very skeptical of situations and keenly aware of his surroundings; he often overlooked minor details, the ones that did not concern him.

But she, oh god, he had every miniscule detail about her memorized and written in stone. The power that she had, the control, the petrifyingly mind-numbing enchantment. She erased everything that he was and overwrote her own script.

His past could easily be divided into two sections; one part labelled 'grief', and the other part 'her'

Grief;

Grief was everything that fueled him. Everything that made him stronger, yet at the same time weaker. The triggers, the fresh blood of innocence dripping from his hands, the mind numbing electricity coursing through his nerves, spiralling out in his gray matter until every bit of his sanity was thoroughly dissolved.

Although it was a distant memory now. It was irrefutable and it was something he had to live with for the rest of his life.

Grief was an anchor that he carried, something there to weigh him down so he doesn't wander too far off and lose his sense of direction.

Something that kept him from soaring too high so he doesn't burn his wings.

Her;

Then the other part was 'her'. It was like a lucid dream, every moment he had spent with her. Every detail tucked neatly behind his eyelids with absolute precision.

The reflection in her eyes looked like molten silver every time she gazed at the fresh row of daisies on her balcony; the ethereal glow on her face when she saw fireflies lighting up the nearby meadow; the way her rosy lips pressed into a thin line every time she drank the sweet nectar of a flower.

This part of his life was antagonistic to grief perhaps. Contrary to anchors, It was like wings that lifted him and freed him of all the weight that he carried. The part telling him to wander, to get lost in the wilderness, to be free.

Without this part his feet would never have left the ground in the first place.

Because she came crashing into his life, with no prelude or prologues. Defying everything he considered to be a basic code of conduct, breaking every rule. She homogenised herself into his life so seamlessly that he couldn't believe he had a life before her.

She lived freely, carelessly and relentlessly while he preferred to be skeptical, paranoid and cautious. They were polar opposites, chasing opposite dreams, she wanted to fly and he wanted to fall, somewhere in between, they lost direction in their heads, colliding in the way.

But this isn't the story of how they met, it's the story of how they parted.