Meadows

I missed her.

I went through a number of fleeting forms, never staying long, skirting around the earth, enjoying myself but always a little distracted; the whole while hoping to return to her while she was still within that lifetime. Knowing she missed me, hoping it would somehow line up perfectly and that she would be ready for me to come back.

But it’s not quite that simple.

She carried on with her life, and she had others who came to her and blessed her with the beautiful connections they had to offer, the kinds of connections she had longed for. I was a little jealous maybe. But I knew our time would come again.

Meanwhile I played in the meadows of the rolling green hills, trickling through the stream toward the valley. I came back to buzz between the grasses as fat clouds jockeyed each other across the sky. I came back again to the same hills, this time as a single green blade swaying back and forth in the autumn breeze, watching old friends crawl and fly and jump around me, feeling the crusted dry leaves of the late year flutter down and settle.

I did my duty and grew and lived, breathing in the energy of the world around me, breathing in all that I was connected to, and rejoicing in every changing of the season. I felt the rain and watched the stars and laughed at the creatures all finding their place with each other in our strange delightful world.

Again and again and again.

The next time there in the meadow, I was pretty and white and smelled sweet.

I peeked over the heads of the grasses around and I waited for the young woman with golden hair to run up the slope to me, to pick me out of that meadow, me, of all things, to smell my scent and pluck my petals. I was happy to die there in her hands for her purpose, for I knew the seasons would keep turning, rolling, changing, and that she had picked me to keep me changing, learning, growing.

I had a feeling I would see this woman again. Someday, in some form.

I sighed sweetly. I lay back in the palm of her hand and she laughed, throwing my spent body into the quickening breeze. I watched from afar then, drifting further and further away, as she ran down the hill, back to her village in the valley, the clouds rolling in across the distant mountains. The rain began, just lightly at first, as she found her way home. I could only just see now, the image growing so faint, as she reached her family and shelter.

And I wondered what this could all be about.