Fourteen Scenes About the Death of a Loved One

This is a story i've been working on based on a Sufjan Stevens song....As always, feedback will be appreciated.

I.

It was a cool fall evening, the sky gray and the air still. The goldenrod tied with a blue ribbon and held under my chin as i walked, wrapped in a coat and a scarf and just beginning to see my breath in the air. She lived six blocks away and was sleeping, but i wouldn't wait until morning. She needed something bright when she woke.

It was dark when i arrived and so was her house. I went to her window and her curtains were drawn so i laid the bright little bundle on the windowsill where it would draw all of the East's early light. The defiant yellow flowers, growing in the wild and the cold, seemed to speak good things about the end of a year when everything else was closing and falling.

I wanted to tap on the cool glass because i knew she was there, eyes closed and breathing, and i wanted to see her, but instead i pressed my palm against the pane as if i could feel the warmth of her heart or the lingering smile from her dream. Then i left.

I walked slowly for a while, in the middle of the street, following the reflectors and staring up at a sky framed by branches. I felt that, despite its infiniteness, there was a sort of intimacy to space and the heavens. That perhaps it was that feeling that caused things to grow upwards, like trees and men.

As i neared home i picked my own yellow flowers to put on my sill, hoping there was something symbolic in the same light warming different windows, but mostly i too wished to wake to something bright.