Yesterday, I picked a flower.

I was walking home from school with Bradley, and I felt like a little child asking if we could make a side trek to look at the flowers. It was only a few meters away, but I did not feel as though I could go gamboling away.

We walked up a small grassy slope, and I stopped, having nearly stepped on a flower. I carefully minced around them, and stood staring at the rocky incline and a paradise of little blue flowers. The space underneath my brother's window is littered with them at home, and as with so many things of late, I am dismayed at my inability to remember their name.
I looked at them, and then reached down and snatched a flower. I held it in my hand, though my body was pushing me to hide it, to prevent anyone from knowing what I had done.
Tears tried to join the slight rain when I looked down at it.

Most of the way home, I blurted out what I had been thinking the whole way. "Do you feel as though you've done something wrong every time you pick a flower?"
As though you've shortened the life of something beautiful.
Selfishly endeavoured to keep it to yourself.
Destroyed the chance that someone else might pause to look at it and be moved because it was beautiful.

Right now, the flower is sitting to the left of my computer, flattened and dry. Twenty three hours ago, it was alive and thriving. It would have been so, still, today. A week from now, nothing but a memory would remain.
Right now, I could keep my little blue flower forever.
I could treasure it for a moment, forget, and let it lose its meaning as things tend to do as time flows by.
I could end everything now, open my window and let it float away.
I could crush it, leaving nothing but dust.

I just pinned it to my board, where it will stay for another sixteen days, after which it will face one of those inevitable outcomes.

Beautiful things should be left alone lest they become just another thing that we should throw away.

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