8 million.

The flowers flow down the river as I read her gentle words, and I can’t help but touch the little scrawls of I love you between the rhyming verse. Though for a moment, I look above the collection of parchment that was hurriedly stitched together, to observe the bland scene as if it was but a flowing river. No petals glee with blossom, there is no laughter and no cries. It’s as if the words she wrote, were nothing but lies.

But no, how can that be? A child cannot lie about love. Mistakes, yes. Denial, yes. But I love you is a message from the heart, and these sketches and precious words feed my soul yet tear me apart. I need to rest but I am too tired, I need to cry but I am too empty. If only, if only, my little girl would find me.

The flowers flow down the river as I read her gentle words, but the leaves blow against my sides and interrupt my gaze, wrestling through page to page. I snap the book shut and it catches a single red leaf. After retreating home and nursing the fire, I return to her book.

Taking a deep breath, I open her book to the last page and remove the leaf.

‘Dear Mummy,

End of chapter one.’

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A flash fiction piece I wrote after listening to a story about a man's desperate attempt to find his long lost child. After a decade of searching, he finally found his son.