The Poppy Fields

by Nikki Erlick

whenever Ava battled a particularly strong bout of anxiety, her hands ended up bearing the most obvious scars. She would scratch at her cuticles viciously, leaving the skin pink and jagged and cracked. Often, at least one finger was wrapped in a bandage, while the rest of them were dry and dirty from hours at the sketch pad or in the soil out back. Her nails, of course, were always bare—no manicure stood a chance. Ava knew that her hands looked ugly. But they’d still built her a beautiful life.

wasn’t immediately sure if the gibe was good-natured or not, such was the trouble with having been teased as a kid,

there was power in small acts of compassion.

“Grief. The moment when you realize that your world and the world are entirely separate. When your world has come to a grinding halt, when you’re drowning and flailing about, and the world just rolls on without you.”

“My friends asked me how I could possibly let myself sleep for such a long time—could I really allow the world to just move on without me? They had no idea that the world was already moving on without me. And that’s precisely why I wanted to sleep.”

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.”

She’d lost the person she thought she was and the person she’d planned to become.

“I think that if you’re capable of greatness,” Ellis said, “you have to use it to better the world. Leave the planet or the people around you stronger, or happier, or healthier.

mostly thick black smoke. This fire was all-enveloping darkness where nothing could be seen. This fire was crawling low to the ground, where the blazing air was ever-so-slightly cooler, the air above you as hot as a crematory. This fire was choking for breath, and yet trying to breathe so carefully, rationing the limited oxygen left inside your tank. This fire was groping at the corners and floors and walls, trying to remember where you came from and retrace your steps and hopefully find your way back. This fire was blinding, disorienting, suffocating. This fire was a lot like grief.

We didn’t worry about whether a stranger’s bullet was ever coming for us. But now . . . every child has to worry about that. Honestly, how can any of us live in that kind of world

The thing about grief is that it’s never just grief. For Sasha, grief was also fear. Fear that she might never love again, fear of her unknown future. For Ray, grief was also anger. Anger at the way he’d lost his brother, at the place he blamed for taking him. And, for both, grief was also guilt. It was living with the question: How much was my fault? It was wondering what you could have done differently.

memories were stored inside music, and sometimes you just couldn’t listen.

still just stare up at the ceiling, because I have nowhere else to look for him now except upward, beyond the sky. “I hope you’re not hurting anymore,” I tell him. “I hope you’re not tired anymore. And I hope I did everything right by you.”

bland normalcy of the day, in fact, felt like an affront. How outrageous for the earth to not reflect the change, the disappearance of someone so special. The fact that the world was now just a little bit less.

Grief and faith could coexist.

I’ve learned that the heart is a very big place, with room for many loves inside. And when one of those loves is lost, sometimes it’s too much to ask all the other loves to make up for the one that’s missing. The heart needs time to reassemble itself, to learn how to beat again when a part of it is gone.

Isn’t that what everybody wants, in the end? Just to feel a little less lonely?

She felt like she was disappearing.

“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.”

“And some of us just need to be surrounded by the people we love,” she said, “and feel that they love us back.”

Love changes us. It strengthens us, and dents us, and lifts us, and guides us.

grief was love in its second shape.