Sugared Summer

Marigold sits cross-legged in the grass where the daisies grow taller than her knees, their stems bending as she leans in too close. There’s sugar dust on her fingers, pink and chalky, sticking where the heat has made everything a little soft. The necklace in her lap is already half gone, bitten through in uneven gaps, the elastic thread stretched and damp where she keeps pulling it between her teeth.

Her mother had shown her how to pick flowers earlier, how to pinch just above the leaf so the plant keeps growing. Marigold tries to do it the same way with the sweets, careful at first, then less so. A petal tucked behind her ear, another caught in her hair. She lines the broken candy pieces along the edge of a stone, matching them to the colours around her — lilac to foxglove, pale green to the unopened buds still waiting their turn.

By the time her mother calls her in, the necklace is in pieces and the garden smells faintly of sugar where it shouldn’t. Marigold wipes her hands on her dress and gathers what’s left, threading a few of the sweets back together with clumsy fingers. It hangs shorter now, uneven, but she slips it over her head anyway before running back through the gate.