Platinum Rose

Grief ebbs with the appearance of a rose...

  She sat upright, her back supported against the oddly warm granite, her head resting on the flat top of the stone marker. The heavy sky hung low and dark, the cracks of light in between were of a stone gray, not unlike the tombstone against which she now rested. 

  A distant boom and flash of light not far off barely startled her, as her mind was else where. She nodded her head foward and rested her chin on her chest, her shoulder-length platinum blonde hair framing her young and delicate features. Her eyes rested on it, the thing that had brought her here. The entire town had been talking about it, not that that was really a surprise to her. Noonsbury, Texas was less a town and more of a village, with a population barely pushing the one thousand mark. It only took one person, the groundskeeper,  to see it, the thing which brought her there, to that exact plot in the Noonsbury Memorial Park, and the entire town knew about it in less than two days. She had found out on the third day.

  She, of course, was always the last to know things. She was the last person in high school to find out that her best friend had broken up with his long time, cheerleader girlfriend. She was the last person to be asked to both the junior and senior proms. She was the last person to know that her parents were getting a divorce after twenty years of marriage and she was the last person to find out that her parents dirvorced because her father was gay. But, this one, this hurt her the most. After all, shouldn't  she have been the first to be told? Shouldn't she have been given the priority? She has lost so much in her short life on earth; why not her? There was only one thing that she had known before anyone else; that thing, that event is why she should've been told.

  Her eyes didn't study or question or probe the thing; they just laid on it, her gaze absorbing, taking in the shape and color, allowing it to gently burn onto her memory.

  Rain drops began to float fat and slow towards the ground and onto her body,  a platinum-colored, thornless rose swaying with each watery impact between her splayed legs. 

  Thunder ripped through the air and this time she took notice, as it tore through the sky, the sound tore through into her memories: the broken glass all around the floor and seats of the collapsed car, the smell of burning rubber, and the normally yellow color of another car's headlights made red by the blood that had saturated the  reminents of the windshield.

  She unconsciously touched her forehead, allowing her fingers to run along the wet, raised line that is carved onto it. The thought comes again: Why her? Why me? 

  Lightening flies across the belly of the dark sky, seemingly unzipping the heavens from which rain had been staying in wait.  The few pellets of fat rain drops became a fractured tsunami, crashing in wave after wave onto the earth and the girl. She didn't move, she didn't breathe, but she thought:

                              "God, I miss you"

  The rain drops came down like hammers from the gods, pounding the earth and the girl and the rose, which was drooping now from the heavy assault. More thoughts the same came to the girl as she stared at the platinum rose, which was growing singular and alone out of the earthen tomb: How? Why? What does this mean?

  As quickly as the realization hit her, the rain eased, but didn't stop. She didn't hesitate as she reached out the hand that had examined her scar and grasped the platinum rose gently and plucked it from the ground, pulling up a small tangle of roots. As she slowly brought it close to her, a darkness overcame her senses. The rose touched her nose and she inhaled deeply the sweet, silky, familiar aroma into her lungs.

                             "I miss you, too" 

  The voice sounded like her, but wasn't and out of the darkness in her mind came an image. It was a girl, identical in all ways, other than a scar on the forehead and a small beauty mark on the chin. The familiar face, framed by platinum-blonde hair, smiled and faded.

  The girl lower the platinum rose and her senses returned, showing her still dark and wet surroundings, the rain slowed, but by no means gone. She smiled, her tears indistinguishable from the rain falling on her face. She raised her eyes to the dark sky and smiled again. Then, she pushed herself up from her sister's tombstone, touched two fingers to her lips and touched them to the stone's top. The rain began another onslaught and the girl turned and left the graveyard, rushing towards her home and back to a life that had stopped two years before with a crash.

Reviews

[perfectlymetiKulous]

Wow... lovely piece. The imagery was astounding. Very vivid.
"the broken glass all around the floor and seats of the collapsed car, the smell of burning rubber, and the normally yellow color of another car's headlights made red by the blood that had saturated the reminents of the windshield." -- remarkable images spring forth from these lines in particular to me. Not sure if you care but I think you want to say "saturated the remnants". Just a little thing I noticed.
But overall, this was excellent work. Can't wait to read more of your stuff!