[Fiction] Flowers

It was a beautiful day, almost too beautiful for what he was going to do. The sun was out, the sky was clear, birds were singing. People were actually happy, or so it seemed. In any case, the weather didn't really matter. He had done this on days when the weather was good as well as when it was bad, sometimes even when it was horrible.

He sat a few steps away, holding a bouquet in his hands. A mix of white and red roses, her favourite. Emotions flowed through him, though hidden to the outside world, each particular emotion triggered by a certain memory. Occasionally, a solitary tear would flow. Sometimes he'd wipe one away, and sometimes he let them flow uninterrupted.

As intensely as he felt the emotions, it didn't last long. It never did. They subsided, and were slowly replaced by feelings of gratitude. He was grateful that he had got so lucky, that she had picked him. He was grateful that she had loved him, and that in turn he had been given the chance to love someone back. She was responsible for his transformation, from a selfish, egotistical, self absorbed idiot, to what he was today. She was gone now, but lived on, in his transformation, in his memories, in all the good she had gone in the world

He got up and walked to her grave, and gently laid the flowers beside it. He stood silently beside her grave for a few minutes, and then whispered a short prayer under his breath for her.

He then fetched a pail of water, and gently poured some on her grave, taking special care to make sure the short grass now growing there was well watered.

He left shortly after, but not before saying a small prayer for all the inhabitants of the graveyard.

He would be back soon enough.