Daisies

I look back at the concrete imprisonment, for what seems like the millionth time; it feels like my entire lifetime had been spent staring at those pale grey walls, the barbed wire topped double fencing, the tiny dirt-smudged windows barred with thick black metal.
“You’re free to go”, the guard simply says. He stands there expectantly in his un-creased navy blue uniform, bright and new; his source of power, lifelessly holstered on his hip. A half-hearted smile tweaks at the corner of his lip sympathetically. I haven’t seen him before; I know all the guards by name but this one looks unfamiliar. His hand makes a tiny, uncertain gesture towards the concrete path which runs along the high fence, encouraging me to walk with him. I take a tentative step out from the shade of the short veranda into the relative warmth of the cloud-smothered sunlight. A slight breeze kisses my cheek coldly, skimming across my number one haircut and chilling the tip of my nose. I feel slightly uncomfortable in jeans and my old Tool band shirt my cousin sent to me; it feels odd that something so familiar could also feel so alien. It’s this place; this institution; it familiarises you with monotonous routine, strict rules and everything colourless; the food; the sheets; the clothes; the walls; the life, if you can call it a life.   
“I heard you got twenty-seven years in gaol for a crime someone else committed”, the guard pipes up, attempting casual conversation but failing miserably. I feel the horrible pang of anger rising up to my throat; filled with memories of frustration, anger, hopelessness, depression; terrible images came flooding back of the court room; the judge in his sheep-like fluffy wig tapping his desk with his hammer of condemnation:
“Guilty”, he booms; the shock overcame me and my entire body felt numb and bloodless. I remember gazing back to my family; crying and shaking their heads – I felt shame even though I was innocent. Their judging eyes searched my very soul; burning through my flesh and hoping to find the truth.  
“Any longer in that place and you’d have been pushing up daisies, they reckon. I heard that on the news and …”

But I don’t hear the rest of what he says.
It caught my attention; the way he said the word. The way the wind suddenly picked up and seemed to brush away the bland prison like an insignificant pest; a mosquito or a fly.
“… Daisies”; he makes it feel like a question; a faint echo in some other world that draws me in magnetically.

I stare unblinkingly, damp eyes meet nothingness. The word feels like a dream, a word that means the very essence of purity; of freedom. Something sparks in my brain; a memory; a feeling; an emotion. What is it?
“… Daisies?” I mouth, barely. My eyebrows furrow, with the quizzical frown of someone remembering a forgotten dream. A feeling takes over – so overpowering; the sickly sweet scent of flowers and a warm Spring day; so perfect, so lovely, so temperate. A lush paddock, where the fences are old, rickety; thick wooden hunks held together by thick grey bolts; smoothed with age but tinged with patches of rough orange rust. The grass is green like emeralds, lush like some kind of ancient Amazonian forest, deep jungle green. Each blade long, brushing against each other in the breeze like bendable soldiers. The silence is only disturbed by the chirps of little ruby-breasted swallows; the soft sound of grass rippling, ocean-like – and the continuous buzzing of bees; so seemingly unimportant, secretly working hard. The hum fills my ears, like a constant, pleasurable vibration; consuming me and fading into the background; unnoticed, but still there; comfortingly. The birds splash honey into my ears with each twitter; sweet melodies flow through me with each new note. The breeze makes me feel woozy, slightly drunk. The sun feels warm and golden upon my face; everything seems perfect and eternal. My head is filled with nothing; it is only a receptor, relaying beauty to me; into where I do not know, but I feel it. The sticky air fills my nostrils with every choking breath, only this choking is pleasant; choking on the warmth, the fragrant pollen; tiny particles I can feel enter me through every orifice, like a spreading ecstasy. And it is ecstasy; this feeling welling up inside; the calm swimming through my veins. I can imagine it gushing through my body as a tumbling brook, taking place of my blood; tinkling down my arm, legs, neck. The calm is the water, rushing down; taking with it the dead leaves and twigs; the past, the regrets, the guilt. Who cares about the past? What’s done is done. Nothing is remembered in my Spring field of peace and redemption. Where bees hum carelessly, tumbling into each white maned yellow orb and out again, again, and again, forever searching for the golden pollen within. Where swallows skim across the top of my luscious emerald carpet and flit around each other in their eternal aerial ballet; appearing and disappearing like flickers of an old film, where sleek glossy blackbirds and mottled thrushes burst with magnificent song from the boughs of an ancient tree; a monolith amongst sheaves of green. The leaves glow in the sunlight; the trunk is strong, hardy; leading to the massive canopy of leaves upon leaves upon leaves. Life is here, rooted deep into my field, the very heart that beats; so faintly. All I need care about in this heavenly scene is taking care not to step on the gems of daisies speckled over this dream paddock; like shining jewels thrown down by some careless giant; embedded into the soft grass like golden buttons wreathed in ivory feathers, pinned on a pillow of green.

“Are you okay?” the guard asks; the panic clear in his raised questioning pitch. He moves his hand towards me automatically in a gesture of caring; then realises and retracts the hand.
“Yeah, of course …” I mumble, snapping out of my heavenly vision and back to the mundane reality of reality.
“Oh good, you looked all glazed over, come on …” he continues the unsuccessful conversation as we begin to make our way down the path towards the gate.
I’m back to thinking about life that lay ahead, full of complications and unpredictable scenarios. The whole world iss waiting for me; my family problems, my failed relationships; I’ll have to start all over again. I wonder how everyone is, and what the world looks like. Has it become even more unbearable and confusing than it was before? I wonder how many more species we’ve killed off; how many more countries have been blown up; there’s a lot to catch up on, there’s a lot to be depressed about. Humans don’t understand the world, the concept of harmony; we’re all too selfish to care about the future.
And, like an incessantly whining mosquito, all the horrible memories; the depression, the guilt, the human thoughts, and the frustration came rushing back to drain me of my life blood and sanity.
How I wish I could get away from it all; the uncontrollable life in the real world, and go back to my beautiful heaven filled with daisies and buzzing life and solitude and freedom...

I glance over at the guard as we walk, still chatting away merrily to himself, his pistol still holstered to his hip. I hold back a smile; it won’t be lifeless for much longer.