Bluebells

TW: Grief, Themes of Suicide

The woods in May are Kate Bush’s garden.

Bluebells cocking their little blue heads...

It is an absolute carpet of them - thousands upon thousands of heavy-headed, bruised bluebells stretching out between the ancient oaks, a rippling sea of velveteen violet.

They catch the dappled afternoon light, filtering it through the canopy until the whole world feels like it’s drowning in contused luxury. They nod away at me in the gentle breeze. Left, right, left, right. A hypnotic, rhythmic, effortlessly beautiful little dance. Millions of delicate, fragile bells bowing in a perfect, silent interpretive dance. It is a stunning, overwhelming display of renewal - they’re the pinnacle, the pavee peak of the season.

In the merry month of May...

I’ve decided it’s also the perfect place to get completely, blindingly shitfaced.

I take another long, burning swig of Mad Dog 20/20 from the bottle, waiting for the cheap, candy-laced lighter fuel to dissolve my peripheral vision. I haven’t slept in days, thinking of you. The world is already tilting. The bluebells are blurring together a little more now, morphing into a frantic, purple smear, their slender stems twisting in the wind like a crowd of dead-eyed sycophants at a Garfunkel gig.

All hail the crow toes, the witches’ thimbles. Nature is screaming its grand triumph into the void, and I’m just a wet mass of bacon bits drinking radioactive swill in the weeds, watching the flora twitch. Left, right. Left. Right.

My pocket vibrates. A low, dull buzz against my thigh.

I pull the phone out. It’s my father. It’s my mother. It’s my latest fuck. It could be all three of them, honestly, trapped in some bureaucratic cosmic committee, calling to audit the exact percentage of disappointment I’ve managed to achieve by mid-afternoon. Sometimes I get all three confused. They don’t mean to but they’re pulling me every which way. They tend to need something, it’s quite pesky really. A signature, a kiss, a heartfelt apology, a pulse.

I don’t really have much of any of those thingy-ma-jigs, these days. I slide the screen to silent and drop it into the mud, face down, so it can vibrate against a worm. Let them ring. Let the whole world call. Maybe the worm will have better responses. More satisfying conclusions. Worms can’t tell their heads from their arses most days either.

Ah hell, I think I’m drunk.

Pickin’ a bluebell in the merry month of May

Is something I’ll remember when I’m old and grey,

And if I live to ninety-two I know darned well

I never want to see another Scots bluebell.

The breeze is picking up now, whipping the woods into a soft frenzy. The bluebells are thrashing, a sea of chittering purple teeth, leaning into the draft and fluidly obeying the air. They are just so wonderfully mechanical. It makes me envious. I want to be a mindless stem, too, just a wee vertical straw sucking up rot and turning it into a pretty colour.

Stop asking me stuff, world. Seriously. Just let me be dumb. I like it here. I don’t know nothing. Just sat here looking at pretty colours.

Maybe I’ve wandered into a ring of these and I’ve fallen into a fairy enchantment. Will I hear the ringing of its bell? God, times like these, I hope so.

I look at you.

You’re sitting right next to me, completely alive, aggressively breathing my air, and eating a bag of salt and vinegar crisps with all the enthusiasm of a wood chipper.

But Mad Dog and Englishmen do a lovely number on the brain, and as the wind hits the canopy, making the bluebells tilt in their thousands, my mind decides to do a little redecorating. I close my eyes halfway, letting the blur take over, and suddenly you aren’t sitting on the moss anymore.

I imagine you up there instead. Shifting left, then right. Left. Right.

Past the drooping, heavy heads of the flowers. Up into the lower branches of the oak.

In my head, you are catching that exact same breeze, moving with the very same fluid, metronomic grace as the blossoms below. A solitary, vertical mass twitching in perfect, sickening unison with the finicky flora.

I picture you doing the exact same fucking dance, just six feet higher, a meat pendulum in a ruined wool cardigan, tracking the air like a trained dog. A catastrophic structural failure of the neck, a witty tongue turning black, and a pair of mud-caked shoes hovering just inches above the petals. Snapped vertebrae and braided nylon rope. The ultimate, nauseating adios to our friendship, playing out on the back of my eyelids.

“You’re staring,” you say.

“Am I?” I reply.

Your actual mouth moves, spraying a tiny crumb of potato crisp onto my knee.

All the little bluebells...

I open my eyes. You’re still down here. The phantom rope disappears, and the horrific weight in my chest gives way to a sudden realisation. I look at your living, breathing face, your fingers digging into the crisp packet, completely oblivious to the graveyard I just built for you in the canopy. I drop my head with them bells. The hot, sticky tears finally spill over, burning tracks through the grime on my face, blurring the woods into watercolour.

I squeeze my eyes shut again, sobbing into my knees, completely alone in the prison of my own head while you sit right beside me. We both get stuck there sometimes. Times I can come up for air, but others, it’s a struggle to get out. It’s okay when you’re beside me. Except you’re not beside me. Not today. You got stuck a little harder and you haven’t come back yet.

You’re miles away under a blanket of mud, and I am up here losing my fucking mind in the weeds. If I call you, you’ll play me back at my own game. You won’t pick up. Remember the song?

“Tell him, I’m dead if he’s calling me.” And the whole fucking world is on my case. I’m a bitch. I’m thoughtless. I’m not sad enough. Not happy enough. I don’t say it enough. I’m the devil. My hands and feet are cloven. I’m a wired-wrong chameleon. I fuck anything that moves. I’m Gary Oldman’s faded camo jacket. I fear I am completely eviscerated from the inside out. Hollowed out like a slaughtered animal, left to rot in the midday sun.

And the bluebells won’t sit still for a second so as to let me get my shit together. They just keep swaying. Left, right, left, right.

I feel sick. Yeah. I’m gonna vom.

Why did I drink that shit?

“You’re turning green.”

Am I? Manishi… hey, love…you still there?

You in purgatory? Me too.

You there?

Ha! ‘Course not. I’m pissed as a parrot.

I lie back and gaze into the endless sky. I don’t know if I’m laughing or I’m crying. I don’t think it matters much any more.

...ah, my barry deekin’ wee manishi - hasn’t this just been the merriest ole month of May?

---

Help & Support Resources

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• Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741 to connect with a volunteer crisis counselor (US & Canada) or 85258 (UK).

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