Under the Blossom Trees

It’s a wonderful view from here - from the top of the flats on a clear day I can even see the Post Office tower. But just now I’m leaning over the rails from high above, looking down at you playing and I can’t help smiling. There you are running around the crab apple trees that line the road, scooping up all the pink blossoms and leaving the white ones; every now and then you disappear from view under the canopies. Later on in the year you’ll be collecting the fruits from these same trees, biting into their hard, sour flesh, loving the taste and miniature size of them. I watch you holding out the hem of your summery dress and piling the laden flower heads into your makeshift basket, inspecting them before you let them in, dropping any browning ones back on to the grassy verge. You look so content on your own, self-absorbed and chatting away to yourself; you’ve made this perfect world and you don’t need anyone. I love it when you laugh and smile to yourself and I wonder just what it is that makes you so happy.

All of a sudden you’re off, running across the tarmacked road to the cemetery. You’re cradling the flowers in your dress with such gentleness and I know exactly what you’re going to do next, even though I won’t be able to see you any more. My eyes fill with tears, but I’m still smiling. You’ll be skipping along the grassy paths between the stones, looking for graves with no flowers and over every one you find, unkempt, uncared for, covered in lichen with words fading to nothing, there you’ll be scattering the colour and life that you’ve harvested with your tiny hands. And you’ll keep coming back to the trees, filling your skirts ‘til dusk.