Hanahaki - She: a written-in-verse poem

 Hanahaki disease is a fictional illness born out of Japanese Shōjo manga. It describes a condition where someone suffering from unrequited love coughs up or vomits flower petals or even entire flowers.

 

 

She gaped at me. 

I saw my words settle in the moist air on that gray sky afternoon,

The whistling whipping wind paying no mind to all that I have bottled up.

She wiped those sickly pink eyes She has and I sighed. 

“Stop crying,” I said firmly, and She’s hanging onto every

 Vowel and consonant I speak,

“The disease is set in stone. You couldn’t cure me anyway.”

The thing is, She’s really not at fault for this.

She’s someone I’ve known since elementary school and paid no attention to.

Then I did.

One random day,

It hit me, just recently, with no rhyme or reason. 

And my heart pulsed more and more driving me into resentment.

I notice everything about the way She exists now - 

The brown hair into ringlets like a spiral staircase She wears,

Light, light tawny brown skin, freckled by Jackson Pollock himself,

Hazel eyes, She had. Very few girls I’ve met had

Hazel eyes like She. The complete opposite of me

In every way.

I didn’t expect this nor was I sure I even wanted this but I was stuck with this.

Not just the feelings sinking into my bone marrow, the 

Cough

Blood

Lilies 

Coming from my stomach in ravenous starvation.

The disease was brand new, diagnosed days ago. 

This inability to feel oxygen in my lungs, the quench for thirst that only burns,

Losing taste to every delicacy because it doesn’t match up to the one in front of me, 

The petals forcing me to chew on their silk, suck on the pollen, feeling the stems in my gums.

It’s too much. 

So She gets to be stuck with the aftermath. I don’t ache about that (I tell myself that).

So yes I went to the house She sleeps in every night to reveal a nightmare. 

She’s at the door on the other side the same time I knock with my knuckles. 

Hearing the screen door go fwack fwack fwack until the door swings open.

She thought I was only coming to pass on notes from todays class She missed.

That’s not the only thing I came to pass on though. 

The moment She sees me all surprised at the banging, I release what’s inside of me.

Lilies fly out of my mouth, white tips coursed with blood of my lifeline

Pouring onto the flowerbed when I turn to puke up what’s inside me.

She’s frozen, lips trembling in anxiety. 

And all I feel is spite.

She saw how I stumbled words in our conversations out of nowhere,

Noticed my inner glee sitting next to her in class for the whole year, 

How my looks were filled with more longing than simple acknowledgement -

The signs were there. Now it’s too late. 

I wiped my mouth. Then I said what I said. 

Then another lily clawed its way up my throat yet again with a wet gurgle and 

Popped out of my mouth, leaving shreds of soft tissue from my cheek in my mouth. 

It floated between us slowly descending to the ground in front of those feet

That will never walk intently towards me.

She slowly reached down and scooped up the tinted lily 

Mindful as a gardener is to their soil,

Holding it in an open palm.

My bitterness washed away at that scene, I was weakened at that moment.

I blink away my own tears and hand over the notebook and quickly said 

Goodbye,  

Leaving that flower in that palm,

Hoping, once the disease finishes me off, 

She would remember me.