Dear Sunflower by Mark Justine Tesorero

This story is part of the Make it Bitter or Make it Better Writing Challenge, where we invited writers to explore the storytelling possibilities of a simple situation. We gave authors free reign to interpret the prompt as they see fit, provided that they give their story a clear ending.

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Dear Sunflower, 

This is the last letter that I will ever write to you. I’m saying this because I finally have to, not because I want to. I will never want this. There is a weight in letting go that no one can teach you. How to bear it, and yet, here I am, shouldering it anyway. Writing to someone I can no longer hold, someone I can no longer reach, someone who is most likely already distant, physically and emotionally, in ways I can never even thought of try repairing. Yet, I write, because to leave unsaid what is constantly consuming me for very long time would be worse than any heartbreak I’ve felt and will ever feel. 

If I’m being honest with my dear self, like truly honest, there’s nothing left to say that won’t reopen old wounds. There’s nothing left that won’t sting. Make me ache and cry, make me relive nights I spent staring at the ceiling hoping for abyss to play with my broken heart. The same way I did when your laughter still rang in my ears and your absences echoed through every corner of my world. Yet, I write. Writing letters, I’ll never actually get the guts to send, and thus will never send in my lifetime. I know I am writing words that might never be read. Words that are as much for me as they are to you. I’m doing this for release, for survival, for closure that might never come in the form I hoped for. No, closure that you refused to give. 

If you ever find these 200 letters, I hope it’s when you’re broken so you’ll understand how I went through because of the closure you refused to give, that way I can somehow hurt you because that is something I can never do to you. However, some part of me wishes that if you find these 200 letters it’s when you’re already healed, when your life has moved past the memories of me, past that lingering feeling of uncertainty. Or perhaps it will be after I’m long gone, and these words are nothing but traces of a memory you barely recognize. Because these letters hold everything you were to me, Sunflower, and everything you weren’t. The person I loved, the one I imagined to marry, and the one I am still crying over after so many years being apart. I know I’m contradicting my words but as you know I was never easy to understand.

I loved you then, I love you even now, and I can say with absolute certainty that you are the one person I have ever truly loved outside of my family. No matter the relationship I’ve had before or after you, no one has and will leave such mark. I loved you so deeply it becomes ridiculous, pathetic, and so unfiltered. My friends saw it, and even now they are seeing it. They noticed that the cold, guarded, poker-faced bastard that I am could suddenly be reduced to a child, talking about us with giddy and a tremor in my voice. I would sigh when speaking of the future we imagined, imagining growing old together, having children that are as quirky as me, sharing a life that was ours and ours alone. Then how I was reduced to a child that shutdown it’s door and cried inside the room where no one can see when we broke up. The absurdity of it, the vulnerability, only made it more intoxicating, and more fragile. 

 I know you would call me a fool for acting like this but what can I say, I loved you the way fools love, blind, relentless, desperate, and pathetic. I loved you in ways I probably shouldn’t have. I loved you in ways that left me vulnerable and exposed to the world, yet unwilling to retreat. I guess you did nothing wrong. And somehow, everything wrong all at once. That’s the paradox of this situation we are in. Maybe, the paradox of you. The brilliance and the chaos wrapped into one, leaving me always off-balance, and unable to step away despite knowing what I should do.

I began writing 100 letters, an idea that I got from that movie that I consider as one of my few favorite filipino movie. A futile attempt to explain the intense and immense feeling that I have for you. You know I’m bad with words as I either overexplain or underexplain. I can never find the balance that makes sense to the world. I thought, somehow, these letters would carry the weight I could never voice aloud. When I was writing these letters I imagined giving them to you when I proposed, imagining a life where we could finally be together, uninterrupted, and maybe bit naughty when the sun sets. However, that vision was shattered and destroyed me when we broke up, when you broke up with me. I ended up deleting it all in desperate hope that I would forget you instantly.

Yet, I started writing 200 more letters that is still dedicated to you. However, this time the intension is different. I’m writing not for you, but for me. So that I could save myself from the grief, to process the pain I could not share with anyone else, because you know me, I keep it in, I do not let people see the parts of me that is struggling to survive in every minute of everyday with amount of pain that I’m constantly carrying, the amount of betrayals that still lingers in me. I do not wish to impose sorrow on those who would only feel helpless at my suffering. You were the only person I trusted enough to see me when I couldn’t hold it in, and perhaps, the only one I ever will. I just didn’t anticipate that you’ll be one to cause the pain I know I will never forget.

Honestly, after we broke up, I tried to hate you so bad. 

I tried so hard. I wanted to scream. I wanted to curse you in every language that I know. I wanted to blame you for the nights I spent staring at the ceiling imagining our future that I could now never look at the ceiling without remembering you. Your memories refused to let me sleep at night peacefully because in my mind I want to hurt you in ways that you could not anticipate, or at least that is what I’m asking my mind to do. But you know what, hatred never actually came. It couldn’t. You mattered too much. You mattered more than I could ever show, and more than you probably ever could realized. The depth of my care and love for you made resentment impossible. 

I even asked my friends to speak badly about you, to give me something to hold onto, something to justify the pain I still have. Something to make me feel like the one who was abandoned was somehow right. Like a trash taking itself out of my peace. But they saw through it immediately. They reminded me that I had never once spoken badly about you, not even after all the pain. And they were right. How could I? How could anyone find fault in someone who had changed my life so much that I learn to try to taste almost anything because you’re always trying something new. 

So, I am left with love and a quiet, and pathetic bitterness. And I know this bitterness will remain, this is something I know will be permanent in my heart and soul. Sunflower, you changed me. Completely. 

I already told you this way back then, I think bitterness is worse than hate. Hate is fiery, loud, and temporary. You can forgive someone you hate, you can learn to forget what they did. However, bitterness clings. It reshapes you. It burrows in. It teaches you caution, suspicion, and mistrust, not to mention you carry it on to your next relationship. Bitterness teaches you to question your own heart, cloud your judgement, and distance yourself to people. And the hardest truth is that the bitterness is not just about what someone else did to you. It is about what their absence is teaching you and taught you. 

I am miserable, Sunflower. Bitter at the permanence I imagined, only to be robbed of it. Bitter at myself for giving everything to someone incapable of giving back in equal measure. I am bitter at the universe for creating this desire that I know won’t happen now. The desire to be with you. I am so bitter at the silence you left, at the memories that I can’t erase. At the parts of me I will never reclaim after all you’re all of my first. Yet, even in this bitterness, I cannot regret loving you and I would never do so. The that I chose, and every choice I made to be with you. I don’t think I will ever will because it was my decision and mine alone. 

Can you still remember how we started? 

We started with your pathetic little hi even after writing in my bio that I won’t entertain anyone who hit me up with a hi but somehow when you sent it, it felt you’re provoking me. I know that kind of message so small it should have meant nothing. But it did. 

I remember scrolling through your profile, hesitating over your pictures. I joked, trying to hide my curiosity and how I fell right at that moment. I said that that the only reason I swiped right was because you’re holding a dog, even though you weren’t remotely my type. I know I said it but I was captivated from the first second I saw your profile like the red string is doing its job. Your smile is radiant, your eyes are alive and looking at the world with beautiful lens, are few that pulled me in. The was something in the way you held yourself, unselfconscious and unguarded, that made me feel both terrified and drawn toward you.

You joked that you were going to block me if I really just fell for the dog. However, we kept talking anyway. All night that same day we matched. Each message felt tying me closer to you. Those messages were ordinary and forgettable. They should have meant nothing. But you made them mean the world, and I let you. 

I let you in. I gave you the keys to my heart before I even knew your full name. I gave you pieces if me I had never shown anyone else. And then, step by step, day by day, I became dependent on someone who isn’t even taller or older than me, someone who don’t fully understand the weight of their presence in my life. How could someone so ordinary, so human, hold such power over me without even trying. 

They say men know almost immediately if they want a relationship with a woman and dates are just a way to confirm our answer. I am confirming that. Because how else could I remember our very first interaction, every word, every pause, every laugh. And even now, after years since our break up? And yet, knowing how I felt then, I couldn’t have imagined the storm we would endure and the storm that’ll destroy us.  

Writing this letter hurts, Sunflower. Writing it now, knowing that this is the last time, makes my chest tighten in ways I though I had already learned to endure. I’ve spent nights replaying your face, your laugh, your indifferent glances, dissecting every fight, every argument, every silence, every stolen glance. I’ve wondered endlessly if there was anything I missed, a chance I wasted, a moment I could have savored more fully. And the bitter and painful answer is, yes, there were many moments I could have done things differently. Moments that might have saved us. But time doesn’t allow rewinds, no matter how desperate I am. 

I wanted you, Sunflower. I wanted you more than the air I breathe. More than the parts of myself I had already lost before you arrived. And yet, you were never fully mine. You were always just enough to make me believe in possibility, yet never enough to let me rest in it. You became a masterclass in heartbreak, a lesson in longing. Loving you was like swallowing sand, coarse, choking, and impossible to hold without pain, and yet I swallowed anyway. I was a fool, yes, but I was your fool.

I am bitter at all of the almost. The things we almost said. The places we almost went. The future we almost built. I am bitter at the promises never spoken, the chances never taken, the silence that filled spaces where words should have lived. I am bitter at the absence you left in this life of mine that once overflowed with your presence. I am bitter at loving someone capable of being everything to me, yet choosing, perhaps unknowingly, to be nothing. 

Despite the bitterness, I cannot regret a single moment of loving you. That love, painful and relentless, shaped me. It revealed the fragility of my heart the vulnerability of my desire. And the resilience I didn’t know I possessed. You broke me just enough for me to see how delicate I am. How deeply love can wound, how every attempt to mend it can open new fissure. And you did it without malice, without intent, simply by being yourself. 

While writing this, I realized there was one thing I could truthfully hold against you. Only one. You moved on while we were still together. For me, that was cruel because while still dreaming the future you’re already decided to leave me.

I still remember that moment you ended things over the phone. I remember the sharpness of your words, the clarity with which you said you had already moved in. I felt the world came crushing. I felt betrayed once more in my life. Somehow since it’s you, I ended up blaming myself. I though maybe I had pushed you there. Maybe I wasn’t enough.

At the end, it turned inward, and yet, here I am. Still present. Still breathing. Still haunted by the ghost of your hands, your voice, the way your presence left empty spaces I could not fill. I am bitter beyond repair. Surviving and slowly learning that I should love myself than my future partners. 

I’ve recently started seeing someone, she who holds me without asking me to be anything other than myself. Someone who doesn’t demand I erase you in my life, who doesn’t leave me clawing at memories like a wounded animal. She doesn’t replace you because no one ever could. And yet, she brings the warmth I didn’t know I need, a sense of stability, a presence that tear open old wounds. And for that I am beyond grateful. I can’t say I love her the way I loved you. Not yet. Perhaps not ever. What I can do is protect her, care for her, and choose her. I think that is love in its own form, my way of loving someone.

Sometimes, I know a part of me is still waiting for impossible. For you to choose me. For universe to make us real again. I know rationally, it is impossible. But my heart will never be rational. It holds on to fragments, and remembers touches as if that’s the key to survival. Maybe it does. 

This is my final letter, my last one articulating what I can’t say to you. I will never wish you ill, I don’t wish you pain. I only want you to know that even if these words carry the bitterness, you mattered. You left me bleeding, and through that bleeding, I become new. Someone who is capable of remembering you without collapsing from your memory.

Remember, I will always keep my promises. If the day comes you needed me, I will be there. Just give me a single phone call. Because even in absence and distance, part of me that loves you will not turn away.

Don’t mistake this honesty for cruelty. It is the closest I can come to truth. The closest I can come to freeing myself from the shadow of someone who didn’t stay but left permanent mark on me.

Just as I’ve always done since we broke up, I leave a sunflower every 27^th of the month at the last place we kissed, a silent ritual, a marker of memory, a testament to what we were, and what I will carry. Funny how this letter was completed today, February 27^th, our supposed monthsary. Exactly a month before what could have been our fourth anniversary. 

I guess this really is it. 

I’ll leave a bouquet this time, instead of a single sunflower like the usual. A final gesture, a farewell. A closing act for a story that began with a hi and ended with million unspoken words.

I will forget you now, forget that we broke up not because any of us cheated or did something awful, but you just fell out of love, Sunflower. Yet, even as I say that I know a part of you will always remain with me. In the way I love, in the way that I trust, in the way I carry both joy and caution in equal measure. In the quiet quest moments, in the silence of night, in the warmth of sunbeam, a fragment of you will always exist. 

For the last time, I say: 

I love you and I miss you, Sunflower. 

I always have, and always will, in ways I cannot full untangle or explain. And for what it’s worth, that love has shaped me no matter how bitter it is. That love has made me more myself than I ever was before you. 

Yours once,

Weird Hooman

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