There's rosemary, that's for remembrance. Pray you love, remember. And there's pansies, that's for thoughts. There's fennel for you, and columbines. There's rue for you, and here's some for me; we may call it herb of grace o' Sundays. Oh, you must wear your rue with a difference. There's a daisy. I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died.
Scene V, Ophelia to Laertes, Hamlet
She remembers, remembers everything so clear, sees it still like the bottom of the pool on Osiris. Past is still and clean but now moves like looking through a murky muddy blurry River.
Girl carried out of the god of death. Remember rosemary, Simon? Family dinner in the rooms full of warm we thought couldn't leave, till it burned us down. Garden full of pansies, too many pansies, too much thought racing running down all around falling piles of ashes we were. Rue like nothing else grew round our feet; I rue you rue we all fall down. Rue arrogance, thought River such a clever girl she needed something special, special like a knife. Cold clean scalpels you thought were for good, healing feverfew. Too much foxglove stops the heart, just enough keeps it beating, beating, beating even when brainmindsoul is broken shattered dead.
Simon, do you rue her? She was born and you, you weren't the only anymore; did it cut when she thought herself so clever, full of pansies, dance and sing and solve your homework faster than you? Ever did it tempt you to leave her there? And now she's broken you can care for her safe and smart and sane, strong when she is sick and thick and glass-shattered weak, must be nice. But do you rue it, bringing her out and letting her shatter everything? Broken girl breaks like a Midas-touch all twisted up.
She-I want so much to give you bright new violets, smile at you clean and free and let you have the words in rows neat and sensible and smart, but they withered all when the girl died inside.
Went to the school full of fennel and columbine. Rue but not enough rueing for forgiveness. She was a violet, sweet and short and gone sour so fast. Violet gone to hemlock; pulled from a melodious lay.
But you're not Laertes? No, too kind, never would you shoot stab hurt even one who cut her screaming. Healer, not like me. I'm broken, all I do is break, and you fix with stitches neat in rows sensible and smart.
You call her by her name, but River drowns, native and indued, incapable of her own distress, singing slashing down where she can't be found.
Deep down, she withers all.
A/N: River refers to the mad Ophelia's flower speech to her older brother, Laertes, just returned to find his father dead and his sister crazy. Rue is for repentance, fennel and columbine falseness and ingratitude respectively, and violets symbolize a life cut short. After this scene, Ophelia drowns herself in a brook. River refers to Gertrude, Hamlet's mother's, description of this death:
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.