he suggested we go for a walk. i offered to drive us to a path nearby. we set along the brick lined way, stopping at the end to by ice cream cones, talking incessantly in between licking the drips that snuck down the sides of our hands.
when you're in kindergarten, your biggest worry about a boy is whether or not he will share some crayons with you that day. in elementary school, your best friend is willing to change her seat on the bus in hopes that he'll notice the empty space next to you and fill it. in middle school you write-in 'maybe' on the classic will-you-go-out-with-me-yes-or-no note, just to string him along.
he gingerly picked me a flower and tucked it behind my right ear. its soft red petals tickled, but i didnt reach up to stop his fingertips. we had gone out, broken up, resumed our platonic friendship, started seeing other people. still, i shivered. it wasn't like the bouquets of roses the other boy had given me countless times, the pink ones from the day before had barely bloomed yet in a vase by my stereo.
i let it sit there until i forgot it. we lay, faces toward the sky, pondering cloud shapes and absentmindedly picking patches of the beautifully manicured lawn.
have you ever noticed how it is so much easier to say things to someone when you don't have to look them in the eyes? when you dont have to read their facial expressions? when you dont catch the change in tone of their voice because it gets swept away with the breeze?
on the way home, i reached up to place a stray strand, and the flower fell, its petals brushed my arm on the way down. i suddenly remembered his "gift." he feigned hurt, claiming i hadn't taken care of it, didn't appreciate it.
little did he know how much this smalltinyminiscule gesture meant to me.
little does he know how much this smalltinyminiscule gesture means to me.
he placed it on the dashboard right next to the time so that i'll always think of him when i check it (as he knows i compusively do)!
for awhile, it lived and drew attention, questions. After it died, i didn't bother to clean that part of my car. the soft petals constricted and eventually disintigrated, but stayed intact.
during my accident last december, the force of my two impacts threw the stem into the back seat passenger's side. the ruined pieces of red showered front seats. shocked and shaken, i made my dad retrieve articles from the crushed, accordian-like vehicle. understandabaly, he didn't bother to clean out the petal-strewn driver's chair, deeming the 'dust' unimportant.
in the children's hospital, i thought about the flying red and now-brown pieces while i looked at the clouds painted on the ceiling trying hard to forget that my neck was in a brace and my back on a board. i closed my eyes and willed myself not to cry. my mom tried to calm me, told me there would be more flowers. i knew there would be no such thing.
we hadn't spoken in four months.
i went a week later to make sure i had everything from the little red 'ry before it was to be demolished. i managed to rescue the stem. today it sits in the same spot in my new car.
i see it every day.
i think of dan all the time.
i haven't seen him since august.