Even now, well over 50 years after I wrote the story, I think of it as a gift from … I am not sure where. It just wrapped itself in a ribbon in my mind and said, “Open me.”

After weeks of work, I had completed my short story for my high school’s writing contest. Suddenly, the day before it was due, an entirely new story appeared in my head. It came to me with such intensity and detail that I had to write it, and after I wrote it, I knew that was the story I should enter in the contest.

It was about a young girl whose father dies and comes back to visit her in the form of a lone blossom on their cherry tree long after its blooming time. In reality, my father was still alive, we had never had a cherry tree, and yet the story haunted me.

“Are you sure?” my mother asked, confused as much by

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