If someone loves a flower, of which just one single blossom grows in all the millions and millions of stars, it is enough to make me happy just to look at the stars?
I think not. Because the distance will always widen the void left by my eternal longing.
But then, I know, somewhere my flower is there. And I guess that should be enough to bring every once in a little while, a faint smile for such a beautiful distant memory.
It all started once upon a time. But I must warn you, it didn’t end in a happily ever after.
On my planet, the flowers had always been very simple. They had only one ring of petals. One morning they would appear in the grass and by night they would have faded peacefully away.
But one day, from a seed blown from wherever far-away land, a new plant had come up. I watched very closely over this small sprout which was not like any other I have seen before. Several days later, it blossomed into a beautiful flower. I could not restrain my admiration.
“How beautiful are you!” I said.
“Am I not?” the flower responded slowly.
She was a coquettish creature. But I find her exciting, after all it was the first time I finally found such one of a kind beauty. For days, she tormented me with her vanity, but still with all my heart, I took care of her – watering her, putting her under a glass globe every night, obeying all her whims, and listening to her unbelievable stories.
Until one night, I caught her lying with her words “In a place where I came from…”
But of course, she could not have known anything of any other worlds. I saw her as a seed until she sprung to life.
So in spite of all the good will that was inseparable from my love, I had soon come to doubt her. I had taken seriously words which were without importance, and it made me very unhappy.
When one was hurt by someone dear to his heart, it is for the better to heal somewhere far away from the one that caused him suffering. And that’s when I decided to leave my planet.
On the morning of my departure, I put my planet in perfect order. When I watered the flower for the last time, I realized that I was very close to tears.
“Goodbye,” I said to the flower.
But she made no answer.
“Goodbye,” I said again.
The flower coughed. But it was not because she had a cold.
“I have been silly,” she said to me at last. “I ask your forgiveness!”
I don’t know what to say.
“I cared for you,” the flower continued. “It is my fault that you have not known it all the while. Wherever your spaceship will take you, try to be happy. Now go. Don’t linger like this. You have decided to leave me.”
And so I started to walk away from her, not knowing if we will ever meet again. I wanted to say more. I wanted to tell her how important she was to me. I though she never really cared, only to realize in the end, she did not want me to see her crying.
Now, I am millions of miles away from my planet. And not a single day had passed that I stopped thinking about her.
I didn’t understand everything that had happened then. It fact, I did not know how to understand anything. I ought to have judged by the actions, not words. She cast her fragrance and her radiance over me. I should have never run away from her. I ought to have guessed all the affections that lay behind her poor little stratagems. She was afraid to tell me she loves me because by nature flowers are proud and inconsistent.
If there was one thing I realized, it was this: One never ought to listen to flowers. One should simply look at them and breath their fragrance.
But I guess, it was all too late. My spaceship already exploded and there is no way I could ever return to my planet. And despite the 5,000 kinds of the same flower I have seen in a single garden here in the planet where I now live, I know there will never be any other flower in the whole universe that could ever replace her. Ever.
And as I look at the countless stars searching for the shadow of my flower, I wondered, “Was it my fault that I was too young to know how to love her?”
