The sky is pink. The thousands of cherry blossoms adorning the trees look like fluffy clouds made of cotton candy. Pastel coloured petals rain down, carried on the breeze that ruffles the treetops. They flutter lazily as they sail down like little kites and finally hit the ground. The scenery could be taken right out of a dream, or maybe a sappy romance movie. It seems too beautiful, too peaceful. Like a painting.

A sigh escapes my mouth as I drag the broom across the concrete, sweeping stray petals off the stairs people ascend every day in the hope of receiving a blessing. In the hope to heal and forget. I stare ahead at the path that slithers from the red gate to the entrance of the shrine. I ascended these stairs months ago. Yet I am still here, still waiting. My gaze wanders back towards the tree-studded alley, I can't seem to tear it away from it.

A figure clad in red comes into view. Her kimono is bright like a beacon against the hazy twilight. She moves slowly, strolling through the field of cherry trees. Something tugs at my chest, so hard it feels like the stitches have come undone again. There's nothing there. The injuries have healed a long time ago, leaving only a cluster of scars behind. But even though the flesh is intact and the wounds are long gone, others remain. Those beneath skin and sinew. And those don't heal that easily.

All it takes for the stitches holding my heart together to be ripped open again is a girl dressed in red to walk by. And I'm reminded how she used to wear a red shawl around her head and shoulders to shield her from the chilly air. How the colour of it would match her wide pants that were part of her attire. How her black hair would resist the confines of her ribbons and frame her face in wispy strands fluttering in the wind.

Just like the cherry blossoms she had been named after.

The girl in red stops and turns around, looking for the eyes watching her, almost as if she can feel my stare in the back of her neck. Her breath comes in a white cloud, swirling in front of her face. Despite it being March, the mornings are still chilly, the ice has not yet melted from the mountain tops and my fingers sting in the crisp air. The girl's face turns towards me, her shoulder-long hair swaying in the wind like seaweed in the current.

Her sight is so painfully familiar and yet, it feels like a long-lost memory, a snippet of a former life. And in a way, that's exactly what it is. I should not be alive. I should not be standing here, carrying on like nothing ever happened.

The girl's gaze finally finds mine and seems to linger on me and I have to remind myself, It's not her. I stop for a moment, almost startled, before I grip the broom a little tighter again. It's strange to hear my own thoughts running through my head. Sometimes, I find myself wondering where all these feelings are coming from until I remember, that they're my own. That he's gone and there won't be any voices anymore.

I'm not used to this silence that accompanies me now.

Without thinking, my hand finds its way to the silver chain hanging around my neck, fingers tracing the tiny linked metal rings, down to the vial attached to it, hidden beneath the folds of my clothes.

Two flames are trapped inside the glass, one bright red, the other a dull greyish-black. They flicker and tremble, like a heartbeat. They push against each other, each of them trying to expand wider than before and swallow the other, tangled in a never-ending dance.

My mind flashes back to a night three years ago. A day like today, almost spring but not yet...