November 20th, 2014


He told you last night how he bought a rose but how it had died very quickly and how he had removed slowly the dead petals until all that remained was the protected center. The story had touched you, the gentleness of finger, the consideration, but the single white rose, stripped and small, tucked under your windshield wiper and gleaming in the 5:45 am streetlight, was halting and lovely. It made your cold tired face break into a smile, the weariness and gathering age, gently, but immediately, stripped. The man at the Indian restaurant seems very disapproving that I ask for a table for one. I am drunk off just this one glass of wine. And how, I wonder, is this possible oh and now the table next to me is talking about Versace. I feel very cold near them. "I would enjoy it more if it were 3500" he said. He bought the coat, it turns out, at Gods urging. "Does Marriella want to get married?""well, you see, yes she would, but", her father interposes, "it is better to not be married than married to the wrong person". And this is perhaps what I have come to hear. I am now the kind of professional woman who takes herself to dinner to think, and this thrills me to the ridges of my shins, to the tips of my shoulder blades. As I prepare to walk into the sharp night I feel all my points as coordinates lining up with the stars; there is a map at work and I follow its blossoming.