A/N: A poet's attempt at spear fishing in the inscrutable waters of short fiction, no more, no less. Enjoy it, and please leave any thoughts, be they good, critical, or indifferent.
Disclaimer: I don't own Bones, its characters, or anything remotely related to the show.
daf-fo-dil / [daf-uh-dil] -noun
A bulbous plant, Narcissus pseudonarcissus, of the amaryllis family, having solitary, yellow, nodding flowers that bloom in the spring.
Dew ran off its picturesque petals, like lucid pain within a cupola of beauty. So delicate, yet so strong. His trembling hand reached toward it, to pluck it from its stronghold, to free it. The little blossom looked insignificant in the vast expanse of his cavernous palm, yet, it seemed to encompass the world – all of her – in its vainglorious glow.
He admired it, fondled it in his fingers, somehow trying to extract those effulgent blue eyes from the deep saffron of its stamen. It was the want of physical stimuli to supplement what he felt, what he knew, but he nonetheless wished for it. He almost expected to see the flower's lithe petals bend in the wind as her auburn curls once had, to watch its yawning trumpet mold itself into her supple, pouting lips. It was irrational, she would say, and his own lips curved in a slight smile. Objects have no intrinsic value. Yet, he felt her thrum through the veins of the yellow flower, abandoning the cold encasement of her tomb to once again grace the world with her perpetual beauty.
Yes, he thought, twirling the blossom between his thumb and forefinger, it was a fitting vessel for her soul.
He rarely spoke when he sat with her, but then again, when had they ever needed speech? It was enough to press his face against the cool granite that guarded her, feeling her spirit curl around him to twine with his as he breathed the piquant aroma of her earthly counterpart. It was only these times that he would allow himself to feel the potency of his repressed emotions, to let his anesthetized heart know the deep gashes and lacerations that marred its surface. The daffodil caught the tears that slipped from his eyes as its exquisite perfume mingled with the bitter liquid of love gained and lost.
It didn't matter how or why she'd died. Accident, murder, capture, torture…no words to rationalize the life taken could hold any meaning. It was almost poetic, he thought. Everything he had ever known: motive, opportunity, cause of death, it all ceased to exist, faded away, until all he was left with was the bare truth that she was in eternal repose beneath the ground and he was in eternal torment above it. He placed his hands in the soil before her, trying with all his might to permeate the blockade of grass and earth shoved between them, but it was to no avail. There was nothing to be gained after what he had lost. And so he clung to the daffodil with all the force in his weary heart, feeling, protecting, and loving the soul he held in his hands.
He had once told her that making love meant defying the laws of physics. And, as he knelt, pressed against the only vestiges of what had once been the only woman he had ever truly loved, he knew that keeping it meant doing the same.