The Poppy Fields

by Nikki Erlick

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.

“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.

“I remember my mother saying once that 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.