She's my flower. No, I wish she was, and maybe that's why it hurts. She's a flower, and I wish she was mine. By now, everyone that's coming back is probably already back. I listen to the news every day in hopes that more of the people I killed have returned, but there hasn't been a resurrection report for over a month now.

I honestly don't know why she spends time with me, the way I've been lately. Even so, I know it's not just me she looks at. Like a bloom that just pushed it's way out of the earth after a cleansing rain, she's been slowly opening up.

I look forward to the time we spend together, because that's the time she sends her radiance in my direction. I try not to get jealous, I try not to think about the fact that she looks at everyone the same as she looks at me. I know she does that, I've seen it. But then, what right do I have to be jealous? I don't dare ask if she remembers, if she has the memories she lost when she sacrificed herself for me during the war. Because I don't dare ask, I don't have the right to expect things, to expect what I so desperately want.

Everyone is an opportunity to her. People all seem to be the same when it comes to her newfound openness. I've seen her give that same shy innocent smile to a stranger not a half hour after blessing me with it. The simplest courtesy, a solitary nod, or a single word, she responds to them as if they meant everything to her. And they do, since she avoided people all her life during the war. She's just finding out what it means to open up, to get close to someone, even if it's just a 'hello' to the person she passes on the street.

She's outreached me, that's also part of it, I guess. Even I was more open to others than she was during the war, but now she's blooming into a beautiful flower that I'll never be able to match. I was all she knew after she awoke from where I found her in a grassy field off of the beach. I saw recognition when she opened her eyes and looked up at me, but that was all. I know it isn't fair to say it like that, or to try to hold her back just so she'll spend more time with me.

Besides, all I have to do to spend more time with her is work up the courage to ask. She always says yes, always with that radiant smile, and it hurts, because I think about whether she's freely given that smile and that yes to another, when I'm not there.

Even as I look at her now, one seat to my right, as she watches the movie we've chosen to see, it hurts, and at the same time it feels so good. The rapture in her face at seeing the moving pictures and their story. The free laughter when the dialog or the slapstick tickles her. The sparkling tear when something moves her, or makes her sad. It's all there, out in the open, and she's not afraid to show it.

Just being around her has helped me open up a little, because you can't help but laugh a little more freely, or talk a bit more openly when the person next to you is doing the same. Even so I know I'll never be as free as her. I still don't know how she does it. She simply doesn't care what others might think about her, or she doesn't know that she should care. And who am I to say she should care? I wouldn't think to change a thing about her. Except maybe that I hope she would look at me more.

The movie's over, and she's thanking me, with her eyes and her words, for a great evening. As I walk her back to her apartment, her hand brushes mine, and she spontaneously takes my hand, looking at me with that happy smile. I don't know what to do, what to say, what to think. She doesn't make any demands, nor does she expect anything, she never does. She's happy with whatever I manage to come up with, even if it's just a line of stuttering, or silence.

Part of me hopes she'll go farther, while part of me fears that she'll do just that. If she does, it might mean she's done so with someone else, too. That first part of me wants to get closer to her, to see how far she's willing to do, but the other part is afraid she'll take what she's learned, and go that far with someone else. No matter how much I curse and rail against that horrible, selfish, negative part of me, I just can't do anything.

We're at her apartment, and I can't ask to go in, to have tea with her, to kiss her. I stop, and she continues forward, our joined hands, somehow forgotten, stretching between us. She glances back, that same damning happy carefree smile gracing her lips. Our fingers slide out of each other, and I wave, numbly. She waves back, the door closes, and she's gone.

Gone, until I can once more find the courage to ask her to spend time with me.