Real Real Rose [Dorchestor]

by Aileen Ma

She takes the delicate and thistly red flower from his extended hand and smiles absently as she wrinkles up her nose to find its fragrance. In vain. Unwrinkles her nose as her searching eyes grow big, fixing themselves upon him.

“It’s a fake rose.”

“Only because they last forever. And because that’s what I want us to be like.”

She contemplates this. His hands find their way out of his dug-in pockets, and reach upward and forward on both sides of her, pressing against the stained brick walls. If he allows his arm to reach a bit lower, he will probably lose his balance because of the missing brick in the wall. But that doesn’t happen.

Instead they both stand still.

The wind isn’t blowing, and the roads are quiet. The Moon hangs somewhere out of sight. Her Mom is falling asleep waiting for her. His is somewhere.

Neither of them knows what the other is thinking.

The flower, fallen onto the grimy, rain-wet street knows. And absorbs it all like rainwater. Like a real flower would.

Up against the cold hard wall, all she knows is that she has to be the one to say it. To say it before he will stop his philosophical, or maybe only just stoned staring into her eyes or perhaps her pores and just take her by the lips and breathe to her between kisses and liquid.

If she stands still, after tasting his lies and lunch (beer) and her salty tears, she’d have to put up again. Put up with being his when he wanted her and him never there when she wanted him, and loving every single thing he did while hating every little thing about him.

She’d be stuck in a love that lasted forever but almost never really was love, at least, never was almost real love. And she’d be stuck, staring at the fake flower that had fallen because he’d pick it up and say it’s just as good as and it’d get stuck in a glass milk bottle for years to come.

No. She doesn’t want that. She isn’t really sure what she wants, honest, but she sure doesn’t want this.

She wants a real flower, even if it means it won’t last forever.
She wants a real real rose.

She wants a love so right it’d be wrong, and so automatic it’d combust, a touch like a whisper and whispering that’d keep. And if she’d ever find a love like that, she wouldn’t take away the rose flower and coat it tight seal it shut. She’d kiss it, taste it, and catch it. Love that love even if it turned to dust.

(revised from the previously posted version in the January archives)