ORIGINS: Ignore the painting, just look at the frame that belongs to the first character in the original series. There is a flower flanked by two figures on their knees. That flower has many names, but the one we like means thought (PENSAMIENTO). Words that those figures cannot escape. Something akin to gravity. That brings them to their knees and makes them beg.
This flower is a thought. It’s my world. And I loathe the gravity that makes me its moon. Those 4 words haven’t changed since they first threw me to the wolves, to the lonely, suffocating darkness of space. But sometimes they make me wane, and other times they make me wax. I oscillate between two opposites, between two pieces that should fit, but I never feel whole. I feel full or hollow, but never whole. Never at peace. And this is me howling please. Please! Please! Someone please pluck those petals and scatter them to the winds!
Someone once told me that my love will always be unrequited, and I haven’t been able to get those words out of my mind. I pluck and pluck the petals of that flower, but they keep growing back. To haunt me. Like moonlight. I can’t help having expectations. Everybody has dreams. But at least I have never demanded anything. Shouldn’t that count for something? I don’t need a perfect full moon. I don’t need to have the love I have been dreaming of recited back to me word for word. I’m not saying that I won’t miss those crescents, how could I not? I built my heart with them in mind. But their absence shouldn’t negate the love I have been given. It should be enough. Please. Be quiet. Grow up. Stop dreaming. And let it be enough.
Does it hurt? Knowing that you are not wanted anymore. That the child that put you together, word by word, with clumsy hands and a smile on her face, isn’t here anymore. To water you. To sing to you. To fight for you. Does it hurt? Do flowers like you feel anything at all? I do. I have outgrown many things in my short life. Soon, I will shed this threadbare heart too. Apart from you, the only other thing that child left behind when she broke into tears. I will cry. I will give you that. I will even tell you that I am sorry. Every one of my tears will be a please. But even if you don’t forgive me, the guilt I feel will wash off. It won’t tear a hole in the next heart I wear. Because you are not one of those flowers that has thorns.
I don’t know what to do. The stars are already gone, and I don’t want to share their fate. I want to still be here when I grow up. Like the moon. I want to still be able to recognize myself, after this life brings me to the edge. The moon wanes until everything that she is seems lost. The moon rises from that cold darkness that seems to be full of the howls of more than a thousand wolves, and she waxes without letting fear, hunger, disappointment or anything else this life throws at her change her. I want to be just like her. I don’t want to lose myself. But I don’t know what to think. Which words to use to define myself. Who I am now and who I still would like to be ten years from now. I need a flower that can withstand the cold. But I am just a child. It’s too much. I am afraid of the dark. And I just want to say please. Please. Someone please give me a flower and promise me that everything will be all right.
Someday, when I think back to the child I used to be, I don’t want to regret my naivety. I know that one night the magic will disappear. That moonlight will be drowned out by countless neon lights, and flowers will no longer be inhabited by fairies. I know that real life will be a disappointment, but, please, I don’t want to grow to resent the only time in my life when my smiles didn’t feel like a lie.
Please isn’t a magic word. It doesn’t have the power to turn back time and erase what the word loyalty means to me now. But a part of me can’t help wishing it did. I have nothing against dogs, but Life should never have given that word to them. Loyalty shouldn’t be something that is bought with a few bones and water in a bowl. I have never met a wolf in my life, maybe that is why I gave that word to them when I was a child, and the task of shaping my heart fell on fairytales rather than real life. Back then I believed in devotion. In unwavering friendship. And gratitude. But I soon learned that fairytales get eaten by real life, until there is nothing but bones left, words that don’t mean anything anymore. Just something to throw to the dogs.
Sometimes my thoughts scared me. They didn’t sound like something I would say. They were too sweet, they smelled like I think flowers would smell, but I didn’t remember having planted any of those in my mind. I was scared. I saw myself as a little mouse that one day would be thrown out of its own house. And I wish I had had the courage to fight for what was mine. Or at the very least say please, spare me. But I knew that one day, when I grew up, I would have to set foot in the outside world. The place those flowers had come from. And I did what any scared little mouse would have done. I did my best to blend into those flowers. Until I could call their smell my own.
I want to trust you, I really do. But I can’t read your thoughts, and I know how much those words can differ from the ones that actually come out of your mouth. Please. I want to trust you. Can’t you give me a flower? Just one. I just need a sign of good faith. Just one flower. That won’t turn out to be a lie.
I am not particularly strong. I have just had enough time to accustom myself to the weight of this flower. It is a depressing thought. Not blue. I wish this flower only bloomed once in a blue moon. No. It is purple. The color of the sky at dawn, when hope scrapes your skin and you want to believe, you want to bleed. But you can’t. Because it doesn’t reach your bones, the place where you store all your truths. I have grown accustomed to that color. To that flower. To those four words. I barely feel their weight now. And that has to mean that I am still standing, that I haven’t been buried yet. It has to.
Someone once told me that he couldn’t give me the moon. But every night, instead of tucking me in, he let me sit on his shoulders, bringing me closer to the moon. So close that I could almost feel her kissing me sweet dreams. I never got to touch the moon, but his love was more than enough to make a flower bloom in my mind. A thought that I still water every night. Because I owe it to the child that one night will sit on my shoulders, with moonlight tucking dreams in his eyes.
I am not a bird, but I always thought that one day I would use my arms to fly. Not to the moon. Just beyond the color blue. Somewhere I could float weightlessly. I was never one of those children that need dreams to flourish. I just needed the uncertainty gone from my life. No more yes-or-nos. No more petals that never seemed to run out. No more worries drowning out every other thought in my mind and keeping me out of the sky. I thought that my life would get better once I grew up and I took everything into my own hands. But this is not flying. There is too much weight for that.
Have you ever looked into a black hole? Neither have I, but I once looked into a flower and the future I had imagined for myself vanished without a trace. It didn’t hurt as much as I thought it should have hurt. It was just air leaving my lungs, without dragging me along. It was just petals being plucked, one by one, counterclockwise, until only memories of the past remained in my heart. I didn’t know where to go from there, not anymore. But moonlight was kind enough to fill in the blanks for me. It wasn’t the future I had imagined. But the words I borrowed were beautiful, and they sounded like they would make for a good purpose in life.