Poppy Seeds

Fatuma Mohamed

**Trigger Warnings: Suicide, death, descriptions of blood and corpses, bullying, depression

The most impactful moment in Poppy’s life isn’t one of her own. She often wonders how that single day, that single moment could have changed the trajectory of her entire life, and she wasn’t there to experience it. That hasn’t stopped her from picturing the swoosh of air leaving her lungs, and how it sounded when Magnolia’s neck snapped in two.

Had it hurt? Was she already dead before she felt any pain?

Poppy hopes that’s the case. That Magnolia’s death hadn’t been painful. That she left peacefully. But then the cynical part of her snapped back,

It’s selfish. She’s selfish. Let her suffer.

And ever the perfectionist, Poppy corrects herself. Was.

Oh, when had things gone so irreversibly wrong for them?

Poppy had always been a mean kid, but when had the tipping point been? The moment that sealed Magnolia’s fate and led her to this. A part of her liked to think it was their meeting that sealed her fate. And if that were true, did that make it right for her to hate her parents for ever introducing them? She wishes it did. Maybe believing this single moment had been caused by a meeting she’d been too young to stop, too young to even comprehend could pardon her of the crimes she’d committed. Maybe then she’d finally be able to let out the words branded in her throat.

But Poppy is not an idiot, and she knows why this happened and when it turned so terrible.

She wishes it was different, that she was different. If she could rewrite history, even if she’d have to write herself out of the story, she would. For her, she would. And isn’t that a sort of twisted irony?

A hundred and one times she’d shut her eyes and tried to rewrite history, and a hundred and one times, history bared its bleeding gums, snapped its teeth and seared itself into the pages of their story. For Poppy, it had been the end of that chapter; the page had flipped and a new one had begun. For Magnolia, it had been the end.

Her mind had burned the image of an event she hadn’t been there to witness into the back of her eyelids. Each time she blinked, she was there, slapped against school grounds, red pooling into concrete, falling further and further into the earth's crust, embedding the most fragile parts of her DNA into the ground that had hastily met her body and snapped it in two. She was wearing a smile in the conjuring of an image she had never seen, because even in death Poppy couldn’t imagine a frown on the face of the girl who loved life so dearly and whose life did not love her enough.

It happened on a day like this, where the sun was shining and the clouds had retreated to give the sky a moment to color the world in shades of blue. There will never be another nice day where Poppy is allowed to simply bask in the light. On the good days, she will think of her. On the bad days, she will dream of her. That will be her curse, her repentance to the universe for all she’s done and for all she didn’t do.

The funeral is brief. Five people show up: Poppy, her mother Julie, her brother Kip, Magnolia’s mother Elizabeth, and father Henry. They say goodbye to the body parts they could scrape off the pavement, the rest of her having been power washed off the ground. Henry sobs when he sees what’s left of his daughter, but Poppy knows it’s Elizabeth that will never be able to forget.

Henry’s memories will fade and he will come to accept her death. He will keep the hope of seeing her again alive in every step he takes moving forward. Elizabeth will never forget. She will be haunted by the echoes of what once was, what could have been, and what is. She will smash her face into the very same pavement and smear her own blood into the ground in hopes of understanding why. Reality will be Henry’s salvation and Elizabeth's demise.

Afterwards, the grieving family invites them back to their apartment. Kip offers to help Elizabeth with dinner. Julie and Henry sit in a distilled silence. The couch they occupy is well worn and weathered. Every wrinkle holds a piece of Magnolia’s childhood.

There is a grandfather clock in the corner of the room. Its steady ticking cascades over them. Julie counts every beat with her pointer finger, the ring she refuses to take off twisting around in response. It was always a size too big for her.

“She loved that clock,” Henry whispers.

“I know,” Julie lies. She didn’t know, but she held onto every new piece of information about the girl that is gifted to her. Pretends she knows Magnolia preferred watching sunrises over sunsets, because she found sunsets bittersweet. Or how she frequently brought home injured animals to nurse them back to health. Or how the doctors told them the cause of death was blood loss. That she could have been saved. She clings to these bits and pieces, lets them anchor her and pull her to shore, if only to keep the memory of her from fading too quickly.

In the kitchen, Kip is checking the roast chicken in the oven for the umpteenth time. Anything to keep himself from going insane. Elizabeth’s monotone chopping of onions echoes off the walls. The blue paint sticking to them does little to diffuse the sound.

Clear Skies, Kip thinks, that’s what the shade is called. When they first moved to this neighborhood, Magnolia’s mother had asked her to pick out a color to paint their brand new kitchen. So, she dragged Poppy down to the local Ikea to stare at paint chips, and wherever Poppy went, Kip went.

The argument that ensued over whether they should pick Clear Skies or Coastal Breeze was a memory Kip held delicately in the palms of his hands.

“Who cares!” Poppy had spat, plucking the two cards off the shelf, and putting them atop one another. “Look, they’re exactly the same.”

“They are not the same,” Magnolia yelled, and then cringed at the volume of her own voice. “Clear Skies is lighter than Coastal Breeze.”

Sliding the cards out of Poppy’s hands, Magnolia turned to Kip, holding the samples out so he couldn’t see the colors or their names.

“Kip, you pick.”

Kip is sure he picked Coastal Breeze. They left the store with two cans of Clear Skies.

The memory used to make him chuckle with fondness. But now, the edges are blurred with grief. He supposes all his memories of Magnolia will be dipped in paint cans of sadness now.

Kip can’t help the wet laugh that escapes him. The chopping stops.

His eyes slide over to Elizabeth and she’s staring straight back at him, her fire truck-colored hair vibrant against her ghostly skin. They lock eyes for one second too long and Kip’s stomach rolls with anticipation. He half fears the knife in Elizbaeth’s hand will end up stuck in his neck, but before he can string together words of crumpled sympathy, she goes back to chopping onions. He releases a breath and goes back to staring at the chicken.

Poppy finds herself at the edge of Magnolia’s room. She can’t stand the smell of her favorite foods burning on the stove or the sound of her mother and Henry’s pathetic attempts at conversation. Only when she is up there, standing in a room that hasn’t changed in the four years Poppy hadn’t been there does she realize. She doesn’t have any pictures of them together.

It’s such a trivial train of thought that she doesn’t really know where it stems from. Thousands of moments, thousands of memories, and not a single photo to indicate they had known each other at all. A lifetime of friendship up until four years ago when Poppy broke the rope tethering them. The one that had been fraying since the summer before their freshman year.

The urge to vomit from the realization is so strong in Poppy. She takes two steps inside before collapsing onto the fluffy white rug beside Magnolia’s bed.

Pink tulips dot her comforter, a collection of stuffed animals splayed atop it. The room smells of sunflowers and honey. A shiny pink lip gloss stands neatly on her white vanity. There are scribbles on the mirror in rosy red lipstick. A shoebox stuffed under her bed. A hair tie tossed to the corner of the room.

Hadn’t this been her goal?

Four years ago, Poppy sat around a lunch table and so proudly mocked the death of a teen at another school district. But today, she is breaking down at the simple fact that she doesn’t have any pictures to place on her bedside table to wistfully stare at in the morning and reminisce over in the evening. How dare she be angry about that? What right did she have to feel sorry, while Magnolia’s parents fell apart—people who loved her more than life and would switch places with her in a heartbeat.

This is supposed to be a good thing. Poppy can move on with the rest of her life. Pretend red hair, brown eyes, and a face dotted with constellations never existed. She can forget her now, she’s done her duty, paid her respects, she can let go.

She can’t.

She knows she can’t. It’s too late. The memories of her smile and voice will disintegrate over the years, wiped away with time, even though she will pretend to remember them. The feeling of having that smile pointed towards her will continue to paint her world in shades of red. Magnolia’s very essence is a tidal wave that will rise and rise until it knocks Poppy down in one fell swoop. Until it wraps a slithering noose of sea foam around her leg and tugs her under. Until she drowns.

She wants to hang up a photo of the girl in the study of her home someday, so when the kids she will eventually love more than anything crawl into her lap and ask who that strange girl is, she could tell them.

She isn’t sure if she would tell them the truth. Maybe someday, when they were old enough and had lived lives of their own and Poppy was old and gray and so very tired of living.

She spent half a decade of her life hating Magnolia, and now she will spend the rest of it missing her.