The Florist.

 

The florist moved away today. I think I always knew that she was going to leave me eventually. I just didn’t know that it would be so soon. She doesn’t blame me for what happened. I blame myself.

                I met Rachel almost a year ago. 358 days ago to be exact. She worked at the little flower shop across the street from my family’s bakery. She was the strangest looking person I had ever seen. Her facial features were disproportionate; she had these huge green eyes that gave her a look of permanent surprise and a tiny mouth that looked almost puckered, as if she had been sucking on lemons all day long. Her long dark hair flowed in glossy waves down her back, and she always seemed to have random flower bits intertwined throughout, by accident or on purpose, I never knew. She was the kind of person that made you stop and take a second look. She wasn’t beautiful. Not really. She was so imperfect, so interesting. I loved her instantly.

                The first time we ever officially spoke, it was a Thursday in December. I remember, because Thursdays always feel a certain way to me, almost as if the world is about to sigh. This particular Thursday my mother sent me over to the flower shop to get some poinsettias to display in the bakery because Christmastime was our busiest time of year. As I was walking, my mind started racing with probable introductions and fantasies of what could come from the next moment or the next or the next. I must have lost myself in thought, because when I next looked round, I found myself on the threshold of the flower shop, nerves jangling like a ring of frozen keys. I looked about me, waiting for that moment when I knew that I would see her. Turning around, I found myself face to face with the object of my affection, standing there, a bright red poinsettia in her hands.

                “I’m Rachel,” she said softly, looking at me with curiosity in her eyes.

                “I’m, um, Leigha,” I whispered, though I did not sound too sure.

                She handed me the festive plant in her arms and said, “This one belongs to you.”

I took the poinsettias from her, and looked up to meet her eyes, but she was already gone, disappeared into the depths of the shop. I walked slowly back to the bakery, dissecting every minute of our conversation, finding meaning where perhaps there was none. In the end, I came to the conclusion that I would have to see Rachel again.

Weeks went by and the winter cold went with them, leaving a weak spring clinging to everything like an enthusiastic yet needy child. I saw Rachel every now and then, and every time our eyes would meet, it was as if we both held a secret from the world. We knew each other instantly, though we never spoke more than two or three times in the months before…everything. She would oftentimes leave a single flower on the doorstep of the bakery, especially on the days when I would open or close the shop. I always knew it was from her because the flower she left always matched the ones in her hair. This was our method of communication, because every flower would mean something different.  Soon there were letters, not sentences or verse, but words. Thoughts and emotions of us both, small, but just right. This was our love day to day, and it was a very powerful, intoxicating love, that seemed to permeate the air around us. Every day I worried that someone else would feel it, that tangible emotion, and look at me with accusing eyes as if to say they knew me, they knew me and they did not approve. I lived in greatest fear of my father, who understood nothing of love or even empathy. He judged harshly based on wealth and appearance, and he would never understand my love. He would only see shame brought upon him by me. Yet even with my fears, everything was blissful in those days, and we were happy.

The night it happened, I was in the bakery waiting. I waited all night for her but she never came. My beautiful flower, my rose, never came. The sunlight streaming through the shop windows woke me early the next morning and I knew it was Sunday. Sundays always feel a certain way to me, like everyone just woke from a particularly refreshing nap. I looked out the shop window and saw that the square was relatively empty. It was Sunday, and everything was closed. There was one small person hurrying across the street. Rachel. It looked like her, and though I knew it was her, I also knew it was not all of her. Something was missing. No, something was broken, something inside that no one else would ever see, but that I knew in that moment that what she felt, I would always feel. She was coming to the bakery, so I ran outside to meet her, to embrace her, to make her whole again somehow. She pushed me away, not physically, though I knew she wanted to. It was the look on her face, or perhaps the tears in her eyes, but more than anything it was the way she said my name.

“Leigha,” she began, and though her voice usually elated me, this time I knew that something was ending, starting with a name.

“Leigha, you know that I love you, that I will always love you?” she asked it like a question, but it rang out like a statement of purest intent.

“I know. Of course I know. Why are you saying this to me?” I was scared and clinging to something, something that I knew was already gone.

“Just read this,” she said holding out a small red envelope, “don’t read it now, but when you miss me the most.”

Rachel walked away after that, and though I saw her for a few moments in the long days that followed after, our eyes never met again.  I waited almost two weeks before I opened the letter. I thought that if I never opened it, everything would be fixed. If I never opened it, nothing bad ever really happened. I wish every second that I had opened that letter sooner. But I waited. I waited until I could no longer bear the idea of Rachel so far from me. I opened the letter and read it to myself, my stomach twisting with each word:

“L,

I am leaving soon. I cannot say when, but I know that it will be soon. I cannot stay here. Your father knows. He found the letters, the words. But somehow I think he knew long before that. He came to me tonight, though it may be several nights ago at this point, and told me that I had to leave. Your father threatened to expose me as a liar and an enchantress, forcing me to leave the town if I did not willingly do so. He said he could never bear the shame of having such a disgusting daughter, such blight on the family name. I asked him if you knew, and he said yes, that you had told him everything and that you no longer wanted anything to do with me. He told me that you gave him the letters. Even if it is true, I cannot bring myself to believe it. I know very little, but I know that you love me. That you have to, because I am somehow a part of you. And you are a part of me, my dear. The most painful part. So that is why I must leave. I will leave in two weeks time, and I will go somewhere far away where you can no longer feel me. Just remember me. Remember that I love you and you love me. I know you and you know me, better than anyone else ever can.

R.”

I sat thinking for a long time about how hard it can be to live in the world. How everything that matters to you can balance on the head of a pin. She was the only thing that mattered, and though she had not yet left, she was already gone. As for the letters, I never gave them to my father. How could I? His hear t was long ago hardened and I never expected him to understand my love.  And still, I could not be more at fault even if I had willingly surrendered the words. My heart was too full and my head was too empty. I was never careful with what I had been given. I hated my father then, whereas before I only pitied him.

The florist moved away today. I think I always knew that she was going to leave me eventually. I just didn’t know that it would be so soon. She doesn’t blame me for what happened. I blame myself. I tried to see her before she left, but she was already gone.