The Florist's Flower.

  A rose is beautiful until its once vibrant petals reddened with passion wither to a gruesome black grave jagged to its once graceful symmetry taking the attention to the nearby blue celosia just blossoming in the chilly months of Fall. No matter how hard I try to water the neglected flower, nothing could save its sinking bud. Not even the rising sun promising another morning of light. Turning the sign to hang the start of another day, it took just a second to adjust the soft tulips just right in its scenic entrance hoping its beauty is enough to trap the baited hearts of the abandoned streets needing another soon. Maybe on a date. After all, who doesn’t like the beautiful scent of blossoming flowers? Even if it doesn’t last long, that deceptive smell beckoning as if it would last forever is enough of sweet nothings to lure the victim to appreciate forever. Even if forever is just a moment. 

Ring.

 It took not a glance before uttering the same name written down on the same bouquet of wild sunflowers somehow softened by the sullen wisps of white carnations with the same cheesy line written before in loopy letters for the past three years: to the most beautiful flower of them all, my love Elizabeth. 

“Matthew. Why so early?” Putting down the bulbous snowdrops picking my already calloused hands sore from the garden’s picking just an hour before, I already prepared a piece of old paper already committing his order to memory. 

“Hey Margaret, it’s a code red. You know what that means...” Awkwardly leaning back on the granite counter, he rests his heavy head to the wills of his forearm almost as bamboozled as I to the enigma of an order. Gently laying a single pink rose in front of his torturous mind ready to think of what flowers are needed to say the obvious “i’m sorry for the stupid things I do, but hope you love me.” 

“Oh no, what did you do this time to that poor woman. Did you cheat, lie, or -- oh no! Not that! Don’t tell me you didn’t do the dishes this week!” 

“You almost caught me there. Nope! It’s actually about getting her too many flowers… she thinks they just die too quickly.” Staring up to his striking blue eyes greedy to the ground to the world he surrounds grabbing any piece of tantalizing information he could. No matter if the composition on a random piano, or the loose pencil yet to leave the grip of a student properly known as a grammar nazi in a passing Spanish, or French class he observes. And he learns. Most importantly, he adapts. 

“Oh! Not what I was expecting.” Dropping the rogue piece of paper crumpled to the ground with smeared doodles of sunflowers, it seems it was time to mix up the mold. Something he was good at. Even in his most mundane orders, that twinkling smile lighting up the already lit room making the flowers sing almost as loudly as I is something the average couldn’t replicate the same orchestra shaking the building with a conundrum of singing wallflowers shining their already sunny petals to none other. 

“I’ve got a deal. How ‘bout a white carnation bouquet dazzled with passionate roses, with soft purple hyacinth on the side saying you’re sorry, however it is only to show passion for your lasting relation equalling your love in a zealous amount.” Puncturing the pen just a little too harsh, my mind paced with ideas how to ignore his resting head just a few inches away from mine.

“Hey don’t give me that side eye, it ain’t my fault your flowers are too pretty to just not show off to my wife!” A slight blush adorned his high cheeks rugged from years of working in the harsh mines stealing coal coddled like my precious flowers making a secret family of the fervent haze from the stolen products seen as just a product for a job.  

“Get out, I can’t handle you right now.” I really can’t.

“Aw, you always say that making it even more fun!” Little does he know those singular lines grips my heart to years of consensual torture. Quietly giggling, he continued to stare around the wooden complex at each flower lining the walls as another wallpaper thriving in their stable roots beyond the metal tins. It took not a second before his eyes focused longer at the yellow acacia ignorant to its meeting.

“Anything that caught your heart?” Secretly anticipating his answer, my selfish ego ignores his obliviousness just for a second hoping for once. Just once. The flower’s meanings actually flourished to fruition in a forbidden dream to finally come true. 

“Actually, yeah. That yellow flower looking like a bunch of branches with yellow balls. What does that one mean? You already spoiled the abitina, why not this one.”

“Ah the yellow acacia. A flower showcasing the value of a genuine friendship, but can extend to something further as a forbidden love.” Busing my quickends hands clipping the discarded acacia blossoms growing wildly this year in its bashing beauty with an accurate edge within a second. The same cut used for his passing bouquets. 

“Maybe I would like to buy it one day,” walking over with a critical eye observing its very fabric as if a sterling Van-Gogh, rather than a common flower in an equally dime-a-dozen flower shop named, “flowers” in acrylic white letters. 

“Maybe you should.” My mouth always more impulsive than the more rational brain landing me in a grave I dug. If only I can bring my own flowers to the wake. 

“I don’t know, hopefully soon.” Turning with the same golden flower gracefully clutched in his loose palms as if a precious birth of life in his delicate hands than just another $10 flower. Bringin the soft flower to the same marble touched by thousands of customers this year alone - yet none made me self conscious of the flower’s green shavings littering a corner reserved to clean right after Mathhew leaves. Slipping a crisp Hamilton, he caught my swimming green eyes vivid to his wavy blue with a sentence hes begging to say but yet to spit out in the moment of quiet where his hand slowly inches closer to mine.

Ring. Ring. Ring. A sound I adored as a promise of a new opportunity, I now detested as the reason for crushing soul rising moments back to crumbling reality. A reality where I am not a homewrecker. 

“Oh it’s my wife, I should get going.” Snatching his hand back, he quickly turned with the flower once held softly in his hands crumbled to nothing but yellow ash leaving a path of hopeless yearning each step he takes pass the outside sidewalk, to even the tarnished streets blowing in whatever direction the wind has chosen as the yellow seeds are up to faith’s merciless force. I could only stare, knowing he is only going to come back tomorrow forgetting about his bouquet today. 

With nobody remaining in the early morning of seven, I could only whisper a final thought to bellow in the quiet shop to the dying celosia as its final message passing its once igniting prime, “poor flower, if only there was a way to bring it back to life.” 

It seems even the prowess celosia has to crumble like the flowers before.