The Poppy Fields

by Nikki Erlick

“New technology, new medicine, it’s all made my job a whole lot easier. A lot more lives get saved now. But I’m trying to be realistic here. We may never know if there’s a god out there helping us or hurting us, but we know that humans trying to play God are more than capable of doing some damage.”

knowing full well that memories were stored inside music, and sometimes you just couldn’t listen.

“Losing someone . . . it’s not like a sickness or a temporary rough patch you’re trying to deal with. Even if you sleep for two months and wake up and feel less awful, the work isn’t done. This doesn’t end. This is the rest of your life. There’s no getting over, there’s just . . . getting on. Figuring out who you are now, because you sure as hell aren’t the same person as before. But maybe that doesn’t have to be all bad.”

death anoints all sinners as saints. You read any eulogy or obituary, and you’d think that anyone who ever died was perfect. When someone’s gone, it’s easy to forget all the flaws, all the fights. But . . . that flattens them. It makes them boring.

Poppies are a ruderal species, which means that they grow from the rubble. If something so spectacular can still blossom in even the most disturbed earth, then doesn’t that mean there’s hope for even the most battered hearts to heal?