How to Become a Sunflower

     When I was younger, I wanted to grow up to be a sunflower. We grew them in our shady, little backyard among gravel and patchy grass. I don’t know how they survived in those conditions, but they grew just tall enough to face the glowing Sun. I’d spend quiet afternoons lying underneath them, admiring their towering stalks and fluttering leaves. Kid wonder, rosy face, and sunkissed cheeks. They danced in the wind and I danced with them. They tucked their heads at night and I curled up beneath them. I peered into their spiraled black eye, and they stared back at their pupil. A garden of guardians who could teach me to be taller, brighter, mightier. What more does a little girl need than to learn how to find the Sun? They sang, My girl, we will show you how to become a sunflower. 

A bouquet of sunflowers sit at the base of a hospital bed. They were never meant to be there. 

     My cadaver lies in the dirt among dying calendulas. It’s a beautiful day. A few clouds retreat west, leaving a cloudless sky as the air fills with a quiet nervousness. Crickets click like a heartbeat and the Earth breathes all at once. Intertwining vines wrap around me and I wear them like intravenous jewelry. My foot blooms black and blue, a deadly and deathly flowering mass. Mold and moss grow over my bones as if discolouring tree limbs. I can barely feel my toes. My luminescent skin simmers in the full wrath of the heat. I can barely open my eyes. I sunbathe in radiation, letting multicoloured sun rays through my grass stained veins. Death is a force of nature. 

A team of doctors outline a nine month treatment plan. I come to understand that the hurt is the healing. 

     Don’t be afraid of the pain, the sunflowers say. It means the bad parts are dying. Snakes shed dead skin when they’ve grown into a new one. Caterpillars entomb themselves so they can emerge as butterflies. Two-way growing pains. I make myself as sick as possible as an act of survival, of self-love. Try to salvage roots by digging myself into the dirt. Enter the race to see which part of me the medicine kills first. 

I don’t trust my body. How could I when it’s betrayed me so many times?

     What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, the sunflowers taunt. My body grows weaker. Blossoming weeds sprout like pretty little malignancies. Carnations reincarnated into parasitic spores. Cell propagation gone wrong. I kill it all at once. We’ll go down together. 

 I meet with my surgeon to discuss the procedure. 

     Schoolchildren stand in a circle in the field of sunflowers and dare each other to cut off more of their limbs. I gather blades of grass, rose thorn scalpels, lie down on a foliage surgical table, and cut into my skin. All the birds scream. Red spills like first rain. I welcome the pain. In the place where my limb used to reside, between the healing stiches, grows a young sunflower. I try to wriggle my toes and in their absence find pins and needles. Bloody branches and torn tree limbs rest scattered among the sunflowers. Cut the stems and I’m a bouquet at the base of a hospital bed. Still not dead. 

I fell in love with the pain, but it didn’t love me back. 

     The hurt doesn’t help you anymore, the sunflowers whispered. You’re all healed now. But poison was the medicine once before. I reopen wounds thinking it will help the skin grow over. Picking petals feels like penning a love letter to myself. She loves me. And I can’t help it. I can’t help because I had to learn to love it. 

And no, I’m not afraid of dying.

     I died once already. Death isn’t so scary when you face it everyday. Nothing is nothing to be afraid of. I return to the field of sunflowers. It’s a beautiful day. A couple clouds retreat west leaving a cloudless sky as the air fills with quiet anticipation. We make our homes in familiar places. And this is all that I know. This love saved me once before. Won’t it save me again? I prepare to metamorphosize, weave leaves into wings. I braid myself a flower crown. Fill a pistol with dirt gunpowder... The sunflowers promise, 

There’s a light at the end of the tunnel.

I set myself on fire. My hair set aflame in a lioness halo. A burning, brilliant, glorious light. 

And I was finally a sunflower.