The Poppy Fields

by Nikki Erlick

Because they have each been told, over and over, that the only way out of a hardship is through. But nobody ever told them that they had to stay awake.

Ellis never dreamt of a wedding. She was just never very interested in marriage, in the constant need to compromise, in putting her own goals second, if only temporarily. (She wasn’t that interested in money, either, yet her body still reflexively recoiled at the phrase “joint checking account.”) She never felt ready to assume the burden of responsibility for a spouse, not when the burden of her own ambition was already all-consuming.

she remembered that she couldn’t sleep comfortably with someone else beside her, disrupting her peace whenever they turned.

“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.”

her parents, and her grandparents especially, felt that 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

What an upsetting phrase, she thought. “Settle down.”

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

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.

Heroes are bulletproof, heroes are fearless. A hero would never call a mayday, never acknowledge defeat. It’s humans who are vulnerable, fallible, mortal.

“Ray and I’ve got it covered.” Sky looked at Ava and whispered, “Are they not letting you drive, either?” “Oh, actually, I can’t drive,” said Ava. Sky gestured toward Ava’s glasses. “Did you fail the vision test?” “No, I did not,” Ava declared. “I just don’t care for driving. Never have. I take my bike when I want fresh air, and I take the bus when I want to read.”

Was this what it felt like to have a younger sibling? Ava wondered. Feeling at once like their friend and their parent? Constantly wanting to give them both a lecture and a hug?

How she could at once be in total control—the car would follow her command, it would go where and when she told it—and yet still surrender to the fact that she could only really control herself. She felt powerless and powerful, anxious and relaxed, vulnerable and strong.

But 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.

‘You’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.’”

“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.”

The desert appears empty and inhospitable, it refuses to make a show of itself, it leaves one wondering if life can even be found out there at all. And yet, of course, there is life. Perhaps the most adaptable, most resilient life there is. Flora and fauna that can somehow exist within the extremes of climate.

Life that has found a way to survive, even when the world makes it damn near impossible.

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

This was the other side of love. This was the aftermath, the cost, the opposite end of the bargain. This was the dirty, damp confetti and trampled flower petals, stamped into the muddy ground and tossed about by the wind, long after the parade had ended. This was the sad, lonely echo in the hall, now that the dance was over. Here, in this room, was grief. But grief was love in its second shape.

Ellis had been a student with perfect grades, a swimmer with perfect form, an employee with a perfect record, an entrepreneur with a perfect pitch. But the challenge confronting her now—being a sister, being part of a family—these were roles where perfection simply wasn’t possible.

Poppies are a ruderal species, which means that they grow from the rubble.