A/N: This just popped into my head and demanded life. I hope you all are familiar with the song "You Are My Sunshine," but it doesn't matter if you aren't. The historical background for this piece is that on March 11th, 1990 Lithuania was the first country to officially declare independence from the Soviet Union.
Love Song of a Mechanical Sunflower
/Please don't take my sunshine away./
Repeat, repeat, repeat. He presses the button and the song plays over. It turns over with a groan, gets up, and sings like it's happy.
/You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.../
He hates this song.
It's a mechanical sunflower with a face, smiling from a plastic pot, singing. Internal mechanisms twist its plastic leaves in imitation of dancing arms.
/You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.../
As if it has ever seen the sun.
/You make me happy when skies are grey.../
Heavy, grey clouds pretend to be soft, but he can see into their insides. Little frozen droplets gather, sheep-like, into bunches and sheets and cold, wet blankets until they just can't hide anymore, just can't stop from giggling at their surprise. Gleefully, they freefall.
It begins to snow.
Outside, the shovel sounds. It crunches dully into the top layer of yesterday's gritty, grounded snow. The snow breaks not with the lovely sort of crunch that bones make, but with a small intake of breath, then a sigh back out. Protest at the intrusion. Settle into place on the shovel's edge. Return to the ground in fragments of ice instead of sheets.
The shovel pauses. Blue-green eyes lift, and are still.
/You make me happy when skies are grey.../
Eyes, moving. Searching, wanting, asking for some sort of solace from the storm. Shoulders shrug up and down. He can't hear it, but he knows the shoulders are sighing. It snowed yesterday. It is snowing today. It will snow again tomorrow.
Yesterday blistered hands shoveled the walkway. Today blistered hands shovel the walkway. Tomorrow...
Shoulders come up, sit square. Hands clench inside of their gloves. Eyes squint up, up, against the frozen water, as if against the sun.
/You'll never know, dear, how much I love you.../
He hates the sight. He hates the strength in the shoulders, the hands, the eyes. He twitches, as if to stand up and... No. He is not strong anymore. His insides hurt so much...
Suddenly, blue-green eyes. The head tilts down, brown hair falls into place around a thin, tired face. Blue-green eyes, as suicidal water molecules begin to obscure the window, look at purple ones.
/You'll never know, dear, how much I love you.../
He smiles. It is plastic.
As if he knows how to be happy.
Blue-green eyes just stare.
He falters.
Frozen lips in a tired face smile. But blue-green eyes don't know what to feel, and settle for something in between. They look away.
Outside, the shovel sounds. Crunch, crunch. He winces only slightly, a hand curling around his center. It throbs with each crunch of breaking snow. Throb, throb. The pain creeps closer to his core with each passing day.
Yesterday passed. March 9th handed linearity to March 10th. Today creeps by, slowly, slowly...
/Please don't take my sunshine away.../
Tomorrow will be March 11th.
/Please don't take my sunshine away.../
Tomorrow will be...
/Please don't take my sunshine away./
Static. He presses the button. The sunflower sputters in mechanical exhaustion.
He hates this song...
Silence.
The song won't play.