As I walk through the park, I tuck my hands inside the warm, soft, fleece-lined pocket of my hoodie. Between my dark gray hoodie, black leggings, and long, thick dark hair that would hide my face completely even if I didn’t have my hood up, I must look like someone forgot to turn off the black-and-white filter. In this perfectly constructed pastel rainbow wonderland, I’m just a glitch. 

Soft, happy, childish music plays from a speaker hidden in the bushes. The bubbling of water is so loud, it almost overwhelms it. The velvety flowers brush against each other as they softly drift in the wind. They stand along the twisted riverbanks grouped by color like a paint-by-number. Old and young trees stand between groups, as does bright green grass. The biting smell of freshly mown grass threatens to overtake the smooth and warm scent of the flowers. 

I’m here for one of those. A flower, I mean. But even if I hadn’t come here for one reason and one reason only, I probably still would feel drawn to pick one. The flowers hog the attention to themselves with their delicate, malleable stems and petals that feel like polyester putty in my hands as I bend over and reach through them. Each one moves in time with the music. 

I have to work quickly before someone sees me, but I can’t be too hasty. This flower needs to be perfect. All of these, I suppose, the designers of the park considered to be perfect. They’re each a perfect pastel shade of some sort of rainbow color, each a perfect bulb shape so symmetrical that it looks computer-designed, each a perfect green stem that bends just enough to dance but not enough to break. But just like everything else here, that “perfection” is fake. I want to find something real. For her.

The dancing is beginning to seem like a defense mechanism. I crawl through the grass and prod inelegantly at each bulb, but despite my superior size and strength, the flowers are winning. They smack my hands and sting my face and, worst of all, petals stick to the fabric of my hoodie. I’m going to look like funfetti after this. And still, I keep going. I won’t let myself stop and wonder why I’m even here or what the point of it all is, not now. 

And then I see it. Just a shade of purple apart from the yard of flowers that surrounds it, this one droops to the side, a single petal unfurling like the spout of a teapot. The stem is stock-straight for just a moment before swaying delicately with the breeze, but not with the synchronized dancing. When I touch it, it’s just as velvety smooth as the others, but firmer, not putty but clay, natural and organic. Perfect. I have to use all of my strength to tear it out of the hard packed ground, no doubt fighting years worth of work by gardeners and landscapers and chemicals to prevent someone from doing exactly what I was doing now. I never was very strong, but right now I have to succeed. For her, I would rip up every inch of this stupid place. But all she wanted was one flower.

When I walk out of the park that day, I have left much more than footprints. In my wake are acres of trampled tulips, freshly mown grass turned into freshly scuffed dirt, and a breadcrumb trail of half-heartedly brushed-off petals. And I haven taken far more than pictures. Between the layers of fleece near my stomach sits the strongest tulip of them all. Will they even miss it, I wonder? It never fit in anyway. Soon the flower will find a new home, where it can be loved by someone who loved this park, despite its sappy plastic lies. 

The graveyard where I now sit is worlds away from the park, but it feels just as fake to me. Perhaps that’s because, just like at the park, there’s not a single thing about it that’s natural. The plants scattered around are perfectly trimmed. I can’t hear any birds or even the rustling of leaves over the grating noise of cars rushing along the street nearby. Even the grave I sit at is a perfectly symmetrical arch, stone a solemn gray with only slight speckles, words carved into it by a machine in a square yet traditional font.  The only real thing here is deep under the dark brown dirt I sit upon, and I wish some petals would fall from my shirt and sink into it. It seems so wrong, that I should be dotted with color while she is trapped under darkness. 

She was always the better of us. The one that could appreciate places like that park, even when I thought they were superficial tourist traps. She hated it when I was cynical. She was so optimistic, even at the end. I’m not sure I can bring myself to be so hopeful, especially not now. But still, I have a promise to fulfill. I place the tulip gently onto the dirt. 

“I got it,” I whisper, “The flower from your favorite place. For you. All for you.”

The perfect flower, for my perfect little sister.