She awakens in the grass again – wine stained teeth and tear stained eyes. She wears the juice of kumquats like sticky orange gloves – the same glossy sugar coats her lips. There is a song in her heart, but it is a lament. There is no joy in this dirge, none to kiss the sugar from her lips – from her fingertips.

The day around her is bloodshot – a smeared lens of red wine haze. There is a blanket over her tongue. In the sky above, birds and dragonflies swirl and twitter – she can hear the beating of every wing and every note rings inside of her eyes. Their song, though happy in the morning sun, strikes her senses and explodes like a tree full of bees.

One more morning, one more day, one more endless night of regret and longing. The morning only ever comes after the night’s memories have been drowned. She purses her lips, they stick with dried juice. Kumquats. They always bring the memories, yet she cannot keep herself from eating them – bright orange bulbs of reminders; sour memories of skin and seed. She has swallowed many, the seeds dissolve inside of her. She consumes them so that they cannot take root. One tree of reminders is enough. A forest of memory would engulf her. She would lose herself to the tiny white flowers and sour fruit of what will not be forgotten.

Better to consume before being consumed.

She blinks, hears her eyelids scrape across her eyes. This is not life, she tells herself. This is existence, and barely that. Each morning is the same. With sunshine and birdsong in her eyes, she knows this and searches for courage. With a blanket in her mouth and sticky reminders between her fingers and lips, she searches for strength.

The past will not defeat her. This night will be different. In the darkness she will hold the birdsong and sunlight in her eyes. In the empty night she will remember what it is to be in time. She will hold herself against the night, use her strength to keep the darkness at bay.

She tells herself this every morning, after awakening sticky and blank beneath the sky – the memories of what dropped her here having been drowned away. She knows they will return… bright orange spheres against the dark, citrus stars of memory and loss. She must be brighter. She must remind her memories, and herself, that she is stronger than her past. She is not a dust mote upon the sleeve of the universe. She has purpose. She has direction. A dust mote she might be, but she knows where the eye of everything lies; she can cast herself into it and make the universe shed a tear with her passing.

She pulls herself to her feet. A dragonfly touches her hand, its wings brush her sticky fingers.

Tonight will be different.