She stood alone set apart from the thronging crowd her voice barely audible above the din roar of a bustling city. “Cactus! Cactus! Cactus’ for sale!” As any other the city was consumed with buildings of old, buildings new,reaching and ever reaching to the sky beyond. The people so many people living each in their own separate existence.Small children crying, old men shuffling along out of place out of time. An old woman pausing to catch her breath, young lovers holding hands, shop keepers cluttering the streets with merchandise. It was an overflowing metropolis to hazard at your own risk. Yes, as any other planted from a small seed and blooming to its full overpowering potential often crushing that which is too small, insignificant, or weak, to stay above the oppression of its spreading wings.
And there she was lost in a world too full of people. There was nothing imposing about her appearance albeit rather worn if anything and as yesterday too soon forgotten. But her eyes would tell another story numerous stories in fact for those who chose to read. She towed a small handcart carefully displayed her goods in small clay pots, row upon row,her cactuses. A middle aged woman paused before the cart, packages in hand, a slight stare, no flowers? Then a burst of laughter before shaking her head and moving on disappearing into the ever shifting tide of the flowing crowds. She smiles in confusion as the day merges into the steadily approaching night. A clock somewhere chimes the unknown hour in a year that doesn’t really matter as the city begins to glow. The cart still full the girl moves down the street. A drunk staggers forward begging money, she has none so presses on making her way across alleys shifting into streets. So what waits for her beyond? A small rundown apartment in the lower part of the city, up flights of stares she drags her burden third floor, her room, her home; the one window faces another cement block, in an endless row of granite upon concrete. Near this window the cactuses are carefully placed in a pointless hope for more than artificial light. She’s tired but can’t yet sleep hungry but cannot eat. Why won’t they sell? No one wanted them what was wrong with them, with her? She perceived beauty survival gave them that.
The far wall showed her last attempt at flowers. Withered, they were once beautiful but now they were dead. The cactuses were strong, fierce, born for surpassing odds. She glanced out the window on the city that could not sleep either, and wondered. Somehow the word why was always constant reminded questioning a past she longed to escape if
only she could forget. A tear splashed against the window ledge it had escaped before she found her small cot to lay down in an effort to seek rest.
That night she dreamt as she often did. Her mind wandered to a field covered in flowers mile after mile color upon light. They swayed together in the breeze their dance for the sun. As she walked by one by one their heads began to hang their color to drain away. The breeze suddenly stopped, ending the silent dance, as sunlight vanished behind
darkening clouds. They began to transform into faces. Faces of ones she had known, loved or trusted…laughing, calling, and beckoning to her. Until they too began to fade and were no more. She opened her eyes face against a dampened pillow to greet the steely cold gray of yet another day.
It began as the numerous ones before had, cart laden, streets walked. Her mind numb as she chose places in an endless attempt to catch the attention of the crowds pressing by. Resulting mostly in stares or a scornful laugh from time to time, a questioning glance, perhaps a sale? But no, not for her. So she moves on street connecting to street, as a web never changing, never ending, moving, dragging the cart behind her. She wonders at the crowds and city, until they too become the flowers and the field where she doesn’t belong. Her presence only causing the color to drain, the sun to vanish, and the faces, endless faces, where names no longer matter en-snarled in a web, where pain is the only reality for one who ceased to care.
The sky opens as the rain begins to descend from laden clouds in this city where the sun seemingly refuses to shine. It would be pointless to try and reach the shelter of her home before the downpour reached full momentum. People scrambled to reach shelter, as she pushed through once more finding a small awning jutting from a run down building that she somehow hadn’t noticed before. It had long since seen its brighter day if it ever had. What remained of windows were shadowed and the place seemed vacant, like a shell, where a soul no longer remained. She would wait here until the rain passed then return to what she called home, ending yet another pointless day. She had become unknowingly as one asleep yet walking, day after day, through a world not seeing. Was there really a
point to anything? she asked herself. It was as if the entire human race was searching for something, but what that something was she wasn’t sure. And how could something be found if no one even knew what it was? Maybe it was the oppression of the stifling city or the endless gray of the robbing clouds or maybe a combination of many things her
heart had kept hidden, slowly building over the lonely years, which caused her to cry, like she had never donebefore. Footsteps nearby made her to turn
“Hello, are these for sale?”
A rather pointless question it seemed, from a strange man who added to her list of nameless faces. His features were hard to discern in the dim light. But his voice seemed to offer a calming effect. Rather numbly she answered
“For anyone who wants them”.
“I do.”
He picked one up tossing some coins in its place then disappeared before she could begin to wonder where he came from. The street was quite vacant do to the storm…The storm, when did it stop? She would make her way home now the cactuses were a bit wet they would survive though they were tough, they always did.
Time passed causing growth to frustration adding numbness to the cold that was replacing her heart. One evening near the river her cart caught on something, causing the small clay pots to jar and crack…She pulled it near the edge, as she contemplated many things in this world where she couldn’t seem to feel she belonged. Picking up a cactus examining the crack she tossed it into the river.
“Worthless like me, my dreams, anything can be broken.”
One by one she tossed them into the river watching the icy hands of the currents pull
them under. Useless to everyone, useless to her now. So she watched them disappear,
made them disappear. What was survival, when even that was empty…?
”Excuse me”.
That voice, she recognized it turning to greet the stranger once more. In his hand he held the cactus as plain and unfitting as the others had been. She hoped he didn’t want a refund, yet she couldn’t blame him. He said nothing for a while as they stared at the water together. And then
“Life is like that.” He reflected, as if speaking to himself. “Can any of us really master the currents of time? Perhaps though, it’s not to understand, but to survive, and in so doing bloom.”
She looked at him, emptiness in her eyes, as his words slowly sank past the emptiness.
“Each to its own belongs, and given the chance life blossoms with us.”
He placed the last cactus in her hands and then walked away. It should join its own then she reflected lifting it higher… But what was that? She paused looking closer against the sharp points of its calloused stem, there rested a tiny bud, a contrast of color against pain. It belonged yet didn’t fit. Life, her, she would understand. Taking the cactus home that night, she would dream, in the field her cactus would grow and somehow beyond all the rain, the sun was breaking through……