The Dancing Flower

It’s been eighty long years since the world went quiet.

There are no more humans left, they have all died. But they didn’t die in the ways most often speculated. Their death didn’t come from zombies, or war, or even aliens.

I remember it well, it took a while for it to reach where I live, and I listened to the news as warnings came out. People would start to float around for a few hours with large eyes and dreamy grins. Lots of them would hold hands and jump together with fevered happiness. After their energy was drained, they’d lay under a tree, or they would sit upon soft grass and lazily twirl a flower between their fingers. They would lift heavy eyelids to the sky and their smile would drift away as they closed them again.

Somehow, I am still here, untouched by the folly. Since their absence, I assume the world has reclaimed herself. I imagine that rattlesnakes now curl themselves up on front porches, and birds now nest in abandoned cars. I imagine that vines have choked the railroads and that dandelions have dominated neighborhood lawns (particularly the lawns that used to be perfect, short, and green).

I’ve been imagining for a long time.

My home is on a small boat. I stay in the room with the big windows. Here is where I dance. I dance endlessly, for it is the only thing I am able to do. I sometimes used to bring smiles to others, but now the room echoes with my rusted joints, and my reflection in the glass reminds me of my faded colors.

I am a dancing flower, the kind you buy in the spring with blueberries and ladybug kits. I am the small plastic flower that you set near a window and watch as I dance. You forget about me for a few weeks, because you are busy with your dinners and your silly children who spray you with the hose (regardless if you are wearing your nice watch or not).. But every once in a while, you stand at the kitchen sink and notice me and watch again.

I smile and dance.

But of course, you peek through the window that the dog is digging up the garden again so you run out.

I will smile and dance still.

My home is a boat, a boat that is chained to the docks. I live in a downcast world now, and have since been forgotten. I imagine myself to be fortunate though. With all of this time, my mind does wander.

Maybe there are others like me, in an endless dance. Maybe they, too, are imagining how things have changed. Perhaps they dance still in their kitchen window, and they watch how the bright children’s toys in the yard blanch with each passing day.

What if the blinds in their window are down? The sun would come through the slits, stirring them to dance. Then the blinds would block the sun. Then the sun would come through again. They would dance and then recess, dance, and then recess. They would wish they could lift their face, and wish to cry tears of longing. Longing to either dance forever or recess forever.

Yes, I am fortunate. My view is unchanging because I face the ocean. The briny depths in front of me seem shallower than before. Every now and then, a whale lifts her arm and hums her song for me. Every now and then, a seagull lands and tilts its eye towards me. But most treasured of all, every now and then, the water is like glass, and it is calm. Only then do I notice how gently the breeze sweeps over the water. It seems as if an invisible finger traces from the left of my view to the right.

Sunsets are my favorite, I suppose it’s because I've never seen the sunrise. I have a clean window, and the ocean at my door, but I am forsaken.

I dance as I admire the morning's heavy clouds. Their purple heaviness pushes down my breath.

I dance as I listen to seafoam wash against my boat.

I dance as I listen to the wind, a harmony of whispers.

I bobble as the waves swim towards me, each one overcome by a hungrier wave behind it.

I bobble as I clack onto the floor and rock in my boat.

I bobble as my boat ragefully rolls over.

I watch as my windows screech and crash, and the once calm waters snake in and rush at me.

An automated Icarus I am, as I wiggle in the air. My first glance away from the sun is followed by the fall down, down into the water.

I slip out of a hole and sink, as I watch my boat follow me. Picture frames land and settle into the sand below me. I can hear each magnificent boom as the heavy frames stir up the silt and spit up a column of it. Other heavy things do the same. The blasts and impacts are around me but this time I stare up.

In my last second, before my boat settles upon me, I can see into my old room. I can see everything I never could turn around and see.

A detached waffle maker bubbles down to the ground, and I laugh. I remember the smells of the sweet batter as it cooked, and the excitement in the voices of full-grown men as they gathered around the new appliance that saved them from the same canned meals they had been used to.

A small box of treasures followed next. Loose pictures, some with me in the background. All of them with smiling men as they played their silly games of poker and wrestled for the best time to shower. There were a few other trinkets as well.

But there, tangled in a necklace, is a beautiful pink dancing flower who follows me.

On the days that the echoes of my joints were a little too clear, I wrote it off as my ears playing tricks on me. But no, she must have been behind me. She must have seen me, I just never considered that my echoes were her calls. The moment that the other flower knew I recognized her; my heart broke at her joy. How long she must have waited for me to be able to see her. How long she must have watched the back of my head as I could not wave back to the whales and the calm breeze.

In this moment, she was my best friend. One that I would have made waffles with and let win a wrestle for the good time to shower. It seems I have always known her.

I fear she can not reach me in time, for my little plastic pot inhales the water, but I smile again. This time I also cry. For, in these long eighty years, I was never really alone. I merely was in isolation.