Peculair Pointsettia #8

The dried roses are really real. Tangible. This isn’t fiction. I have them here, somewhere in my apartment. It’s one of the few real, made-in-a-story-book things I have. I was graced with three yellow-cream roses for my birthday. The tips were tinged with pink, like they were brushed against a water-color sunset before being plucked.

He had smiled when he saw my expression. Someone had finally given me roses. I wanted to honor them, and what they meant; so when they started to wilt, as all things do, I hung them over the table from the cheap apartment chandelier. The plated, flaking brass and brittle glass of the lighting fixture seemed odd, in contrast to the fading natural color of the roses. They were there, reminding me of what they could/might symbolize. Slowly the petals would pucker as age came. Upside down, the nutrients in the stem would make there way to the other end, using gravity as a laborious slide to preserve the bloom.

He would see the quaint bouquet hanging there, and his eyes would shine.

We grew together, learned about each other-both habits and flaws. He gave me roses again. Red ones, symbolizing passion. Once they started wilting, I decided to try to dry them again. I tenderly positioned and arranged the blooms, petals splayed to show the wonderfulness of the whorls and flares that make a rose a rose. But then I closed the embrace, between newspaper and unused textbooks. When I checked them a week later, the blooms were molded, and I had to throw them away.

It’s okay-you can’t save everything.

And one day, he stepped away. He didn’t think he loved me. He couldn’t understand a choice I had made. “But you gave me roses…I had hoped”.

They are still here somewhere, in my apartment. Stored away with a few other gifts, I’m told I should give back. More hidden by the memories I try to avoid, than by any physical obstruction.

But he gave me roses-and that’s a start.