The Poppy Fields

by Nikki Erlick

the grief and traumas of history—both personal and communal—were meant to be carried, not discarded. Like weights to be worn all our lives, something to recognize, not to be rid of.

“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.

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

“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.”

“After he died, I just had to think . . . if it hurts this much now,” Donna said, “then I must have been pretty darn lucky.”

But Sasha was a person so filled with love that she’d always feel the need to share it. She hoped, someday, she would again. She hoped she would live another love story.

grief was love in its second shape.

Most of them would never see their names in the press or the pages of a book, but they had all done something that changed their lives and the lives of the people they loved.

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?