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Something Better

The Marigolds

By Cassidy BarkerPublished 3 years ago 4 min read
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Of course he was going to leave me at some point. I just assumed it would be one random night, taking off with my car and darting across the country looking for the Something Better. He was always talking about “something better.” Nothing was ever good enough. There had to be more. More women, more challenges, and more to accomplish. I knew he would leave me one day, but I didn’t think it would be like this.

I stayed behind, long after the burial, the final disposition. I’m still sitting here now. The dirt is so soft, I almost feel like I could reach down and our hands would meet. I finally stand up and don’t bother to wipe the dirt and grass from my clothes. It’s time to go back to our home. My house, but the house I gave him, and the home he made ours.

I pull up to it and just stare. The windows stare back at me, vacant and bare, and the front lawn yawns all the way to my car. The house looks bigger than it really is, situated on top of the hill and with no other houses around to dwarf it. I turn off the engine of my old Honda and roll down the windows. A few mosquitoes find me quickly, but I merely lay my head over my folded arms, hanging out sideways from the window. We never got around to fixing the driveway. Weeds sprout between cracks in the concrete. I think he liked watching them grow, watching them break through the concrete. He always said life was about layers. “It’s the layers, babe, let the things once buried break through!” He got really excited when he talked about that stuff.

What Craig really loved was his garden. There are mostly flowers, though next to his marigold plants he once sprouted a few pumpkins. “Ah, but the marigolds never last, my love,” he’d say it with a sad smile and look over at me. I’d be sunning myself in the yard, watching him shovel and pat the earth with such gentleness. He would fluff the golden-orange bouquets arranged in their surrounding greenery, looking wistfully at them. “Beautiful and helpful they are, but they never last. ‘Nothing gold can stay.’” He loved quoting Robert Frost while tending to his flowers. “Some might think they are a waste of time. We tend to them, watch them grow, but all too quickly they die. They never last beyond a growing season. They’re on to Something Better. But, they help other things flourish, keep the bad bugs away.”

I wish I listened more when he got to talking like this, but it was more a comforting sort of background noise. I also have to admit that I didn’t understand much of what he said. I felt he even spoke in layers, and though I could comprehend the top layer of his speeches, I always knew there was much more swirling beneath. He was a scholar, graduated college with honors, and was constantly on the road and adventuring, meeting people and learning. He said you learned more from people than you ever could from school. The day he found me, I was laying in the middle of the road by my house. I wasn’t trying to get hit by a car or anything, it’s just that nobody ever drives on this road. He came upon me while riding a bike, no easy task considering the inclines he was working with, and just laid beside me, an amused grin on his face. I should have been scared, but nothing ever really scares me. I’d been alone in this house for years now and he made me want to share something for the first time in my life. And then, all of the sudden, I had something to be scared of, and that was life without Craig.

I trail around to the back of the house now. He did it right there. Next to that stupid marigold plant. It, too, would die soon, off to find the Something Better. Is there always something better? “Nothing gold can stay.” Damn right it can’t stay. I tramp through the garden, ripping up bundles of flowers and leaves and plants. I save the marigold for last. It sits there, mocking me. It doesn’t know what a short life it has, or maybe it doesn’t care. I grip it at its base and pull. There’s absolutely no give. I grunt and give it another go, both hands wrapped around the roots and stems like I am trying to strangle it, and still nothing. Garden shears can’t even cut through the smallest of the plant’s petals.

I sit back and stare at it in wonder. The anger that was an ever-tightening ball in my chest is slowly releasing through tears rolling down my cheeks. All I can see is one big blur of gold. It’s the divine light, occupying my entire vision, with beauty too strong to comprehend. I feel all of my emotions at once through powerful sobs that shake my being. I am not sad but depressed at the loss of my love. I am not happy but elated by this beauty. I am not angry at the confusion, but inspired by it. The complexities and simplicities of this thing before me, this one beautiful thing, holding onto something as long as it can. He was my marigold.

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About the Creator

Cassidy Barker

Just here to tell stories.

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