Thorned Carnations

another one, the stars whisper. fed from birth with a silver spoon. raised on privilege and parties. doomed to decay.

you are nineteen and dying. your body is not yours anymore and your heart beats for someone who does not even know it. breathing is synonymous to pain and your only hope is that death is kinder than this. days spent in bed has you wishing that you had grasped the world that much tighter: studied the stars at midnight and risen early for sunrises; talked to people you didn’t know and thrown yourself into friendships that were seperate from your family. you wish you had lived when you still had colour in your cheeks and air in your lungs. instead, you will die here- alone in every way that matters and in pain till your last breath. perhaps this is simply your lot in life- to love and be loved in lethal doses. you are nineteen and dying and you are relieved.

ii.

They made a fairytale out of her:

her dark lashes and crooked smile;

her full pink lips and strikingly green eyes.

They wove tapestries of storytelling about how she died.

Of how ivory skin turned grey- pale and wan,

rather than the clear porcelain of her mother, and her mother before her.

Of how her smile became a rarity,

more of a grimace than anything,

pale lips stretching into a shallow imitation of the easy laughter of her youth.

Of how her face hollowed,

cheekbones protruding and leaving her suddenly

all edges and angles.

Her death wasn’t poetry,

regardless of what they made of it when she was gone.

Her death was a long, drawn out suffering.

It was blood stained teeth and eyes filled with tears.

It was sharp blooming pains between her ribs and a dull ache in her throat.

It was waking up to crimson petals

strewn over the sheets,

on the pillows,

in her lungs.

It wasn’t a fairytale.

iii.

The stories she finds write it as something beautifully tragic: unrequited love given form.

Creeping roots planting themselves in some shadowed crevice of the lungs, nurtured through months of pining, blooming over years of unreturned affection. Twining around the ribcage, twisting themselves up and up until the petals wind their way to the cavern of the chest, creep up the trachea and are pushed into the world.

the novels write it as an ultimate display of love- it isn’t.

iv.

The truth is this:

The first time it happens, she is in the middle of a party.

They’d just been released from graduating dinner and pretty much everyone had turned up for the last party of the year. The common room looks like something out of a dream, pulsing lights beating in time with the low bass of the music and the air thick with the cloying scent of alcohol and perfume.

It’s their last chance at freedom before they have to enter the world of politics and expectant families and they’d grasped the chance to let loose. Someone had managed to sneak alcohol onto school grounds and Carina remembers being roped into doing shots at some point- a surrender to lighthearted goading that she’s beginning to regret.

Already feeling tomorrow’s hangover coming on, she gets up, laughing off the cajoling yells of her friends. She makes her way up the stairs towards her room, pushing through throngs of dancing bodies as she goes, brief flashes of laughing faces illuminated by coloured lights.

The music is fainter there; the open balcony is letting in a warm breeze. She’s about to turn a corner when a familiar voice stops her in her tracks. It’s followed by a distinctly male laugh, one she recognises. The first voice murmers something again and Carina swears her heart stutters. There are a few more breathy chuckles before a whispered, “Not here,” has them walking towards her.

She presses herself against the wall as they pass and almost runs to her room, her stomach suddenly turning. The door slams behind her as she rushes into the bathroom. Clutching the edge of the sink, she blinks rapidly to try and keep the tears at bay.

Carina knows she has no right to be upset. Not about this. Not when she’d been the one to end things. Still, hearing their voices together had felt like shards piercing her very soul. Breathing jaggedly, she turns on the faucet, a trembling hand reaching out to grasp the cool brass. She bends to splash her face, inhaling sharply at the cold water.

The girl in the mirror makes her wince. Her eyes are rimmed red, strands of blond hair plastered to her forehead and a muscle is jumping in her jaw. She grabs a towel and scrubs her face roughly, swallowing down the lump in her throat. The tears are flowing freely now, and she gives up on wiping them away. She’d just wanted one night of peace. One night without thinking about everything that could have been. It shouldn’t have been too much to ask for.

Just as she turns to leave, a sharp pain flares up in her chest. Carina bends at the waist, reaching out to clutch the edge of the bathtub for support. The tile is ice against her knees and she gasps desperately for breath, each shallow inhale leaving her lungs burning. There’s something in her throat, making her cough until she can feel her mouth filling with copper and something else- a foreign grit that has her choking.

Instinct makes her spit it out, a shaking hand raising to wipe at her mouth. Her skin comes away red and she leans against the tub, chest heaving as she stares up at the ceiling. Carina knows what will be on the floor if she looks down and doesn’t know if she can handle what they will mean. She stays slumped on the ground, tears filling her eyes and dripping down her cheeks. A sharp, shuddering exhale and she sits up, hoping against hope that it isn’t what she thinks.

Two petals surrounded by small splatters of blood, stark shades of red against the white floor. Carina lets out a single dry sob before picking up the petals, pushing herself up to her feet and stepping towards the sink.

She lets them flutter into the basin and twists the tap on, watching as they swirl around and around the mouth of the drain before vanishing. She stands for a few minutes, staring blankly at where the petals had been before walking out of the bathroom and sliding into bed. Hours later, her breathing evens out, chest rising and falling slowly, the thrum of the bass downstairs still faintly audible.

The moon casts dim light through the open curtains, and when Carina’s face contorts in pain in the middle of the night, it is the constellations that soothe her back to sleep.

another one,

they whisper.

fed from birth with a silver spoon. raised on priviledge and parties.

doomed to decay.

you are six and crying because your parents are yelling. you hear the slam of a door and the soft clicks of heeled shoes making their way to yours. there is a soft toy in your hand and your hair is still tangled from a restless sleep. the door opens and you look up, ivy green eyes still swimming in tears and a slight tremble to your lips. you are six and your mother tells you to grow up. you are told to put some powder on your blotchy cheeks and brush your hair and for goodness’ sake stop looking so helpless. you are six and crying because in the end, your mother leaves too.

vi.

The stories she finds write it as something beautifully tragic:

unrequited love given form.
The novels write it as the ultimate display of love.

It isn’t.

vii.

The truth is this:

she suffers bone deep pains and rattling coughs,

wipes away the red on the marble,

hides the stained bedcovers.

She fends off questions from worried friends

and her mother’s discerning glances and,

though she’d never dare to say it aloud,

there are times she has considered a quick end.

It seems simpler sometimes,

easier than choking on a garden growing in her lungs.

Quicker than waiting to rot from the inside out.

Simpler than having to explain why she was dying.

Oh, they’d all know eventually of course-

that’s how these things worked-

but she wouldn’t have to be here to bear their judgement when they did.

There are times when she thinks she’d give anything to end it-

when she wakes up coughing,

petals creeping up her throat as she sleeps.

When she is shaking on the ground,
fingers grasping her hair for purchase.

Anything for the respite from the stabbing aches

day after day,

night after night.

But then their eyes meet in the hallways

and their hands brush against each other’s in class

and she lets herself hope.

Those are the moments the illness uses to fuel itself.

The fleeting moments of vulnerability

when she lets herself believe that she is loved.

Believe,

at the very least,

that she was loved.

Even if the roots knotting around her ribs are proof that she is no longer.

viii.

She keeps it a secret though, because she knows that this love is one thing she cannot bring herself to ask for.

She knows what would happen if they were to be together:

knows that she would be scratched off wills and severed from family trees.

She knows that their names would be whispered for generations,

always accompanied with that bitter tinge of

disgust and distanced intriuge:

a hushed warning for other young girls straying from their paths.

She cannot beg for love to keep herself alive, cannot doom them both to living a half- life, shrouded in shadows. So, she takes to carrying around a crumpled handkerchief and balls it up in her fist to hide the splatters of red.

ix.

She’s woken in the early hours of the morning.

The dawn had painted the sky shades of orange and gold

and faint trills of birdsong float through the open window.

The night had left her cheeks wet with tears and blood

and her pillow is covered in petals.

She pulls herself from the bed,

and stumbles forward,

trying desperately to reach the bathroom.

A series of coughs wracks her body-

clothes are already beginning to hang off of her frame.

She presses her hand against her mouth,

knuckles turning white with effort.

But then there’s tears running down her cheeks

and blood flooding her mouth

and then they’re spilling past her hands

and she lets her knees hit the ground,

head bowed and hands clenched.

On the floor,

amidst the carpet of petals,

there’s a single, crimson flower.

In the days and weeks that follow,

they start to fall more often.

She gets precious few hours of sleep now;

the thorns clawing their way out of her throat are too painful to ignore.

The sun rises to a bed littered with blood stained carnations.

The frequency of the flowers grow.

As does the pain.

Her throat is always raw,

the simple act of swallowing is a private torture.

The roots take hold in her ribs,

burrowing into her lungs

and her chest aches at every breath.

Still,

no one knows what’s happening to her.

Her friends exchange worried glances that she pretends she doesn’t see.

Her grandmother writes to her,

and she ignores the guilt as she sends off her reply.

She can’t tell anyone that she is going to die.
She can’t tell them why.

x.
The first time she meets Amata Khalis, Carina isn’t exactly impressed. She is short and noisy and irritatingly self-assured. She is also dreadfully annoying, a fact which seems to be of a much higher degree of severity in the eyes of an eleven year old. Watching her hand shoot up at every question gets old five minutes into their first lesson and soon enough, her mere voice in class has Carina snapping to attention.

By the next academic year, she regards Amata less with annoyance and more with a childish combination of competition and envy. In every class they share, Carina spends half her time whispering snide remarks to those around her, and the other half trying desperately to knock the other girl from the academic pedestal she’d been put on. She never manages to.

Soon enough, their rivalry is infamous. The whole school hears of the countless nights spent in the library, each one refusing to leave until the other did; the heated debates in Philosophy that had driven the poor teacher to tears; and of course, the more shocking prank war that lasted throughout the entirety of April. Neither of them had been caught of course, a result aided in part by the sheer unlikelihood of the idea that two star students would engage in such a thing, but it’s a well enough known fact that it had been them- regardless of whether action was ever taken.

So, it isn’t much of a stretch to say that Carina didn’t like Amata. At all.

Sometime in their fourth year, her perception shifts.

The story changes every time it’s told, but this is the most accurate version: what was supposed to be a hushed argument in the ingredients cupboard resulted in a cloud of flour obscuring the room and a multitude of smashed eggs. The teacher stormed in and that evening, they were set to work organising the detention slips of previous years. A tentative alliance was formed that night, quiet hands diligently stacking up piles on the floor, a silent companionship that they’d both sorely needed- not a secret shared, but perhaps that was the best sort. No obligation to speak or comfort, just the knowledge that someone was there.

xi.

That night changed something between them- not that the rest of the student body would realise until much later. Although everyone still heard them exchanging scorching insults, they missed the light hint of jest in the words that hadn’t been present before. Although everyone saw them staying up late in the library, they didn’t see the books they’d subtly angled towards each other, or the essays being swapped for proofreading and editing.

And in their sixth year, although they saw Carina knock against Amata’s desk, they didn’t see the slips of paper being exchanged. They didn’t see them sneaking from their dorms and into empty classrooms. They didn’t see anything that came after that either. No one did, really- least of all Carina. Not until it was too late.

xii.

you are fourteen and there is a girl. she is small and loud and hides vulnerability behind a perfected veneer of self assurance. the veneer cracks for you and you know you have never been luckier. she is the closest you‘ve seen to an embodiment of the sun and yet you cannot tear your eyes away for fear of missing something you aren’t even sure exists. you cast the warnings that you’ve shed countless tears over to the back of your mind because yes, you know no one will approve of this and you know that she will never be allowed to be more than just another classmate and yet, despite it all, you are fourteen and there is a girl and the world seems to be spinning just that little bit faster.

xiii.

Falling was simple. It was like running- head thrown back, hair tangled in the wind and laughter bubbling from her throat. It was rushing feet through flowers nestled in overgrown grass and the halt of time before suddenly, the ground isn’t beneath you and you’re plummeting, but it’s soft and slow and strikingly beautiful on the ground below and the cliff face high above has no bearing when it’s perfect where you are. Falling is easy.

It’s clawing your way back up

that’s hard.

xiv.

The majority of the people Carina is allowed to be seen with had, at one time, been her childhood friends. Most had grown up with her, having been raised in the same upper echelons of society- all had parents who moved in the same circles as hers.

These are the people she is expected to build an inner circle of, ties forged generations ago of more importance than mere personal preference. They are to be her closest confidants and- when the time came- the pool from which she will find a husband. There is a sort of unspoken understanding that hangs over each interaction, each conversation and invitation that, petty playground politics aside, these were the people that were yours.

Yours for subtle alliances and elegantly greased palms. For dinner parties and tinkling laughter between the clinks of soft glass. Angled brows across courtrooms and business meetings. Sharp smiles under stone-cold eyes and cruel hearts under crisp shirts. Satins and silks to cover sordid secrets. Delicate whispers spilling from painted lips that pay no heed to the silent screams of the masses pushing against a pointed heel. Pretty words from practised smirks that bear no care for the soundless struggling of the thousands being shoved into the dirt.

These were the people who would come to your aid in crisis- as long, of course, as it would not damage them. They would sign cheques and make calls. They would make toasts and remind people of forgotten favours. They’d whisper threats and fling the weight of their names like glistening daggers. Daggers held by hands with no qualms over spinning those blades to pierce through flesh. A blow from behind, a slit of a throat, neat methodical slices to impart warnings. The razor edge between loyalty and betrayal makes it all too easy to slip and draw blood.

xv.
you are ten and laughing with your best friend and the grounds of her home are a blank canvas for your childish imaginations. the grown-ups are talking inside and the two of you had been ushered away. mother and father had been whispering on the way and when Sera’s mother had greeted them, their smiles were as bright as the jewellery draped around her collarbone- and just as fake. you find your way to the tops of the trees and pick berry red flowers from the garden, leaving a wake of red petals behind you. when you are summoned back to the house, the grown-ups are tall and stony and you are dirty and rumpled and some part of you just knows. Sera clutches your hand because her own mother is still sat down, the tendons of her fist prominent. the room is stripped bare of valuables. your mother’s eyes tighten as they rake over you and you can feel a part of you, the part that is always chasing her approval, shrink. you are ten and you never see your best friend again.

xvi.
Most of the people Carina is allowed to be seen with had once been her childhood playmates. Amata Khalis is not a childhood playmate. She certainly isn’t someone to trust, much less someone to love. Carina found that it wasn’t exactly something she could help. She’d been raised on tales of duty and the bitter weight of expectation.

Her mother had lost her belief in love over decades of living with a liar and a cheat. Her father had lost his belief in love when he’d been married off to the first woman with a substantial dowry. Carina had been told throughout her childhood what her role in life was, and love played no part in it. She’d almost accepted that.

She comes from a house that can no longer even define the word love and Amata is brimming with it. It flows out of her very being. It drips from her lips like honey, words spoken so often, yet never losing the meaning they hold. It’s in everything she does, in the very essence of who she is. She is easy to fall for. Not that Carina had realised it.

Falling in love with Amata is an unanticipated accident. It happens over challenging glances in class and hours spent pouring over books to fight each other for top spot. It hides in the biting insults and later, the arguments in the corridors. It creeps in while Carina’s eyes are busy searching for a head of long black hair and a laugh she has etched into the crevices of her mind.

It’s in the hours she spends pretending her thoughts aren’t consumed by her. That her eyes don’t linger on the warm bronze of her skin. That she doesn’t care for the shades hidden in her eyes, nor the singular crooked tooth that the years of braces couldn’t fix.

She takes so long to realise she’s fallen, because Amata isn’t someone to fall in love with. She is frustrating and annoyingly intelligent. She’s stubborn and combative and refuses to take no for an answer. She drags extra credit out of every test they do and manages to beat her in each subject.

More than all of those, she’s a girl. That’s not allowed.

xvii.

you are fifteen and a girl looks at you with something hidden in the depths of her eyes that has never before been directed towards you. months filled with meeting in secret pass in what feels like days and the year is filled with muffled laughter and whispered conversations, clandestine confessions and softly spoken dreams. there is something easy about her, something that makes your eyes close with laughter and makes you accustomed to joy in a way nothing ever has. your dawns and dusks and the hours in the night when the moon is high and the world is the slightest bit blurred at the edges are now filled with someone who feels like the warm air of a spring afternoon. you are fifteen and a girl looks at you and you are in love.

xviii.

Carina had ended things after the summer holidays;

her mother knew.

Going home had been a stark reminder of the real world,

one outside of the late night talks and early morning messages.

The real world was all politics and reputations and,

in their world,

a relationship like theirs wasn’t allowed.

Amata knew that and had accepted it quickly.

Always practical,

even in matters of love.

but of course, Amata didn’t love her.

Or if she had once,

she didn’t anymore.

Carina tried to ignore just how much that hurt-

a feat made impossible with the reminder blooming within her.

xix.
Here is a story. It was passed by word of mouth for centuries before finally being written down, so it’s undoubtedly a differing story to one told a few hundred years ago. The mark of passing generations and the rise and fall of those in power. But here is the version Carina read a few days before she died:

‘However long ago it was, when the aristocracy didn’t know much but knew enough of bigotry and hatred, there was a boy. A boy who had fallen for the servant boy son of one of the maids. The servant boy didn’t know, but the noble boy was content loving him from afar, treasuring the glimpses he managed to steal and the whispered conversations they managed to have.

Then one day, his father discovered him sleeping behind a stack of hay. The noble boy had stayed up to watch the servant boy play with the horses before they were taken back to the stables. The servant boy had never shown up, and the noble boy never did get to know what had happened to him.

The next morning, the noble boy awoke, bruises from his father’s punishment painting him blue and purple, with a pillow covered in blood and a single glistening petal beside him. He died soon after, thin and gaunt and unable to withstand the force of the flowers.’

The first recorded case of the Hanahaki disease. It was uncommon, and slowly descended into myth. A folk tale that soon became twisted to warn children to love the right people, though that had not been why the boy died. But there were always people that knew. Aristocrats whose family trees stretched back to the origins of the tale. Those who had the diaries of heartbroken ancestors sequestered somewhere within their halls of bookshelves. They knew- and Carina’s mother was one of them.

xx.

you are sixteen and clutching your pain like a lifeline. she looks at you like you have driven a blade into her, something hurt and wounded shining behind deep brown eyes. It is the same look you see in the mirror every morning and you have never despised yourself more. her sorrow is bitter in your mouth and each plea from her lips is a stab at your soul. your words become imploring and her’s turn incensed, the byproduct of dreams gone sour. as she cries and shouts and you swipe away your own tears and yell back, you are struck with a thought so shocking it renders you silent. you want to go home. but where can you go when the one person who was your open door is looking at you with a hurt in her eyes that you know will never soften again. you are sixteen and the sharp sting of your pain is the only thing keeping you afloat in a stormy sea of panic and loss and grief.

xxi.
She’d been home for three days when her mother saw a bloodstain on the underside of her sleeve. She’d been home for four when her mother saw a petal hidden in her hand. She’d been home for five when her mother realised.

They are at the table, a platter of sandwiches and cakes displayed in front of them. Her father was away on business somewhere or other, and Carina finds herself suspicious at her mother’s insistence on taking tea together.

Lady Annora is a perfected image of an elegance that had been trained into her since before she could talk. She sits still, back straight and ankles crossed lightly, tendrils of methodically curled hair just teasing at the collar of her shirt. She’d taken two sips of her tea and had spent the rest of the half hour they’d been sitting at the table pleasantly smiling, as though waiting for Carina to say something. She raises the tea cup to dark red lips.

Carina raises her own cup and takes a sip of the sweet tea. She sets it down gently and folds her hands in her lap, painfully aware of every part of her body. Just as she parts her lips to speak, her mother begins.

“How were your final exams?”

Fighting to keep the shock from her face, she speaks, fingers tight where they are wrapped around each other.

“They went well. Everyone is considerably less stressed than they were at the start of the year and I’m sure I’ll get good marks- though Amata is more than likely to get valedictorian regardless.”

Her mother hums in acknowledgment.

“You mention this Amata girl often, did you know?”

There is no accusation in her tone, but Carina knows her mother enough to understand the implication lingering beneath the words.

“No more than is normal, I’m sure.”

Her hand shakes almost imperceptibly as she reaches for her cup again and she wills it to stop.

“I find myself considerably less sure than you seem to be, Carina.”

Her mother’s words are bullets; her gaze is a burning brand.

Carina’s dying heart beats a frantic rhythm in her chest. Tears prickle behind her eyes and it’s only the sheer determination not to let herself fall apart in front of her mother that keeps them at bay.

Something shifts in the older woman’s gaze. For a fraction of a second, Carina thinks she can see a hint of an empathy that had left its absence in her childhood like a gaping wound. It’s gone as quick as it had come, the shutters back down and her mother back to the woman she’d grown up with.

A slender, perfectly manicured hand reaches out and places a petal on the table between them. Carina’s chest constricts as she meets her mother’s gaze again. There’s a trace of something inexplicably heartbroken within them. A mirror perhaps, of who she could have grown to be.

“If you die for this girl Carina,” Lady Annora whispers, shoulders stiff and knuckles white around her teacup, “I will not forgive you.”

xxii.

she hopes death is gentle. she hopes it is understanding, with deep brown eyes and a crooked smile. she hopes it is a kind hand brushing stray hairs behind her ear and a comforting kiss on a plaster placed on a stinging wound. she hopes it is a night sky dotted with dreams instead of stars and a whispering hearth behind an open door on a rainy evening. perhaps it won’t be much better than life, but she hopes it will be warm. she hopes it’s featherlight and soft, with distant, lilting notes of a barely remembered melody and a warm breeze carrying laughter like dandelion seeds over spring meadows. a broken, screaming part of her hopes it is what she imagines a mother’s loving embrace to be. an angrier part of her, one that is still furious and forgotten hopes it’s a father’s apology.

she wants to say that she hopes it feels like childhood, but that life seems tainted now, shown to be spoiled upon assessment with older eyes that carry the weight of her experiences rather than the youth of her years. instead, she hopes death is the person she used to wish she had, years ago, before the little girl she’d been had felt anything but happiness. she hopes there is a face with laughter lines to share her joy with and an unassuming embrace to rush to- no conditions for care, no unspoken rules to prevent punishment. she hopes there is a home with a wall covered in snapshots of the simplest wonders of the universe and countless shelves of well-loved books to thumb through each evening before a soft press of lips and the quiet click of the nightlight.