You look at me in a way that you never have before. ‘Can I ask you a question?’ I smile and laugh, didn’t you just ask one. You smile and shake your head, ‘what’s your favorite flower?’ I don’t have to think about it. Daisies.

We’re in the car and it’s our third date. Suddenly we come to a stop and you get out. You come over to my door and open it. That’s when I notice we’re at a flower shop.

Inside you ask the clerk where he keeps the daises. They’re out he says. You look at me and then back at the clerk. ‘But you see here sir, this girl loves daisies and I love her.’

Love. In that moment I thought I knew what love felt like. No one had ever told me they loved me and I believed him. We left that day without any flowers. Sometimes I think back on that day and wonder, If they had daisies would all of this had turned out differently?

Now. Now I’m like a daisy. Once so full of life during the heat and summer, I’m wilted and thrown aside. Dead under the blanket of snow.

When I first jumped off the edge I thought I made a mistake. Halfway I felt regret. Five feet from impact all I felt was acceptance and calmness. I don’t hate the water. I embrace it. Water rushes in my ears and that’s all I can hear. I try to open my eyes but the salt burns them. Instinct kicks in for me to breath and I inhale. That was a mistake. I open my mouth because I need air. Instead the saltiness of the ocean water rushes in. My eyes open now. My time has come. Remember me for who I was not what I became.

“Do you see that,” I ask Jeff, pointing ahead of us.

He squints his eyes and shakes his head, “see what?”

“There’s a tower a looming in the sky.”

He looks at me with concern, “Alice, have you been taking your medicine?”

“I promise you I’m more sane now than I’ve ever been before.”

“Alice. . . There’s no tower there.”

I turn around to look back up at it and sure enough it’s still here, it didn’t go anywhere. “I’m going to investigate with or without you.”