11 Jasmine flower buds

On a night, in a field, in a place forgotten by the moonlight, there was a jasmine shrub from which eleven jasmine flower buds have fallen off from their stems.

Indeed, the sky was growing older, and had her heart broken apart when her butterfly was caught. The night sky resembled the wings of the butterfly number 3, which were of dark blue colour and bore bright little white spots that were made to look like the stars that never failed to shine brightly from behind the clouds. It was for reasons not beyond a fairy-tale that the sky thought the butterfly very endearing, and eventually fell in love with the butterfly without realising. Then, when the butterfly was caught to be pinned down as a dead specimen beneath an anonymous plastic glass chest to be humiliatingly spread, the sky had finally realised that she had given away her heart without relentlessness. Now, she cannot do anything else but cry. Laden with sorrow, the rains that fell helplessly were too much for the eleven jasmine flower buds to bear, and they too, fell to the ground, disheveled, and slightly bruised.

They had wanted to whisper to the winds, to take away their hearts, and give them to the sad sky; but they could not muster enough words, for after all, they were only little flower buds. Out of despair and lack of anything else to do, the smallest of these fallen younglings wept and no one was around to smell the sad sweet scent of her tears.

"I am slightly bloomed, I was going to bloom even more tomorrow. If only I was bloomed, surely the wind will listen when I ask for my heart to be taken to the sky," thought one of the older buds to say to the others. However, as she was thinking this thought, the wind blew past, and made the jasmine bush shiver. This startled the slightly bloomed bud, and made her forget what was left unsaid.

One of the buds, who heard the thoughts of the slightly bloomed bud, felt sorry that she herself would never even be slightly bloomed. She had wanted to weep, but the wind blew a fallen leaf over her, and she took comfort from being hidden.

Two other fallen buds had fallen away from the rest of the others, and they felt alone and scared, and sorry for themselves that their lives will end sooner than they expected. One of them thought of the sisters she had never got to know, and cried for them. The other one of them thought of the mistakes that she had never confessed, and was filled with remorse but no room to repent.

One of them wanted to curse the reckless sky, for how could she have given away her heart to the fragile butterfly? However, the bud remembered that she had only just wanted to offer her own heart to the sky, for she was moved by the sorrowful rain, and then she altogether forgot that she wanted to curse the sky for being reckless.

One of the other buds cried hopefully to two others,

"Let us flee to the running waters, the rain has made a stream, and that will carry our songs to the wind and the sky for sure." The three of them agreed together, for they were ignorant of each other's follies, and took too much comfort in each other's company. Above all, the three of them had believed tacitly that the rain never meant to hurt them. Yet they were to find that the water was to bruise them even further, and they too, would become undone.

The tenth bud, which was the one who fell before the last to have fallen, was too careless to understand her new situation. She rested upon the ground, and enjoyed not carrying her weight herself.

Seeing the madness of her sisters, the eleventh bud to have fallen, wept silently to herself.

Perhaps it was because of the strong scent of sweet sadness that caught the wind's attention, or perhaps it was not, but suddenly, the wind whispered to them softly,

"Little jasmine flower buds, weeping on the ground, what word is it that you have for me? If you tell, I will listen."

"Wind, wind, wind, wind," cried the flower buds, "please, take our hearts to give it to the sky, so that it will stop crying."

"The sky is crying for she is sad, her heart was broken, and will not be mended by your hearts given to her. It is not the way things are meant to work. You can understand, for though you have never bloomed, most of your hearts are already broken."

"My heart is not yet broken," cried the tenth flower bud with glee while the other flower buds wept a little harder.

"Indeed it is not," replied the wind, "Will you give me your heart?"

"If I give you my heart, will you promise to break it?" Asked the tenth, and it was with this that the wind understood this flower bud desired other answers.

"If you give me your heart, I will promise to protect it, and keep it safe."

"I can protect it quite well, so you don't have to hold it to protect it," the tenth replied defiantly.

"You can break it too, my dear, I don't have to hold it to break it," the bemused wind replied.

The tenth thought about it for a while, and was completely confused. What was there to lose? What was there to gain? There was nothing to refute. Before she could decide for herself, the wind stole her heart, and carried it away.

"Come back!" She wanted to cry to her heart, but she knew it would be in vain, and so, she fell silent.

The other flower buds, that had enough left in them to feel sorry for their silly little sister, felt sorry.

Under the sky, the eleven jasmine flower buds would be forgotten with the things they left unsaid, having found forlorn. The wind, although she failed to promise, carried the scent of their sorrows and the stolen hearts to comfort the sky's sorrows. The rain would soon stop falling and the sun would rise to bring the morning shortly thereafter. The new day would bring new dreams, and new songs to sing, but broken hearts were never meant to ever fully mend.

Bitterness of things

She picked on the sliced red chillis that were soaked in light soya sauce and carefully removed the chilli seeds with her chopsticks. As she was going to put the red strips into her mouth, they sang to her,

"Don't eat us! For we will be minced, by the cruel teeth of your cruel jaw!"

This made her giggle and wonder about life and death. How is it that these little dead chilli could even struggle for their existence? When most of the time she was drunk and could not bear to consider the meaning of her own life? They ought to think of it as some metamorphosis. Like they will be minced, and swallowed, and gone into the stomach with the rest of the food that she had swallowed, and will eventually be passed out of her as, well, shit.

"Look at it this way," she said to them in her head, "it's like, the closest you would ever be to becoming a butterfly."

This reminded the chillis how bitter it was that they felt towards the disgusting caterpillars that bored into their brothers and sisters, and completely ruin them, before morphing into butterfly-like-moths, hatching like angels into the skies. Although she did not realise that they indeed tasted a little bitter, she whispered telepathically to them,

"If you give me your hearts, I will promise to break them."

They replied, begrudgingly,

"If we don't give you our hearts, who else will we give it to?"