A Lily in the Light

by Kristin Fields

Working toward something that seems impossible makes it more of an accomplishment.

“A mother always knows when something is wrong with her baby, no matter how old it gets or how big it grows.”

When God closed a door, he opened a window.

“Good people can do bad things, and bad people can do good things, so maybe it depends on the choices we make. Even good people can do bad things for good reasons.”

Everything’s fine until something important is snipped away from your life like a magazine cutout, and then everything you ever did will feel like air, and you can just blow it all away.

there’s a place for everything you’re feeling.”

Maybe that was her place for everything that was happening. And this was hers.

“No matter what it is, even if it’s just an idea, everything starts with your head, and your head starts here.”

No matter how sad she feels, when she sews, only beautiful things happen. She makes a lot of people happy because of it.

Was she colorful enough to live here too? Her father was a sleeping gray shape in the darkness.

The world here was as off balance and tilted as she felt inside. It fit.

She could be the mother bird, the broken egg, because she’d lost something too.

“We don’t always choose our choices, but they’re ours. Am I happy?” He sighed. “Look around. This is a beautiful place, the most beautiful I’ve seen in a long time. I’m here with you, and I’m happy to be. We can’t be everything all the time. That just wouldn’t be life.”

I don’t have to feel bad, she reminded herself, for living the life I was given.

There was a poem she’d read once about grief, the only one that got it right, that told the world to stop clocks and put away the stars and the ocean because life was over.

Under the veil of darkened homes and shops, empty streets, and the rush of air around her, there wasn’t much difference between a moment and a lifetime.

You’re so fucked up inside, a symphony of misery. She would never be normal. Everything she did would always drip with the mess of things Esme tried to hide.

This is why, she thought bitterly, it was better to leave people behind before they disappointed her. You can be left behind, or you can leave behind.

It always pained Esme that lilies were so beautiful from far away and disturbing up close. There was nothing harder to look at than a lily in the light.

She was bone tired of falling and getting back up, of imagining Liz’s life, of losing her north, her south, her east, her west and wandering alone.

Being needed had eased the sting of not being picked, lessened the line between them.

“That summer, when we first met, I felt so free. Everything I did was important. I was allowed to be happy, but I didn’t have time to be—or really, I wouldn’t let myself because I thought I had to work harder.

well, have you ever seen something reflected in a spoon? It’s all distorted and bloated and not the right version of itself anymore, and the more I talk to them, the more I feel that everything’s just wrong.

The point is we don’t have to live with our pain, Esme. It’s a choice.

Her heart hammered in her chest unapologetically, a reminder that she was alive, with a future she couldn’t yet see. She slid onto Adam’s lap and let him hold her like a child. He wrapped his arms around her, and they stayed silent and still, lost in thought.

“She’ll know you,” she’d said. “She’ll know you without knowing you.”

Esme tried to see the world as Lily saw it: new and breathing in every shade of sunlight.

The skyline was a maze of glass and concrete. The sun rose above the tallest buildings. Home.