The two found in each other another world. Though, when alone, they saw the colorful walls, and heard the gawking folk of the city, it was with emptiness. They could live alone, and they could go through the motions alone. They traveled, and attended school, and worked many hours individually. But that world was nothing to the life alongside the other. It was a matter of being whole. It wasn’t words that were needed, or even participation. They just needed to breathe the same air. As they sat in their favorite breakfast joint with the bad service and the general bustle that never ceased, they spoke with their eyes. While other groups grew distraught at the time it took to cook their eggs, the little couple in the corner sat quietly. They had fought to get here, and were content to sit, with their coffee, and enjoy it.
The chef’s jacket she donned was covered in stains. Her pockets were full of little papers and papers turning to lint, and lint that was once paper. They were her recipes. Every day she rode for two hours to get to class where they would tell her what to cook, how to cook it, and then whether it was any good. Her teachers had been only that. They had passed the necessary exams and received the necessary licenses in order to instruct her ragged class as to what constituted as cuisine. Every time she deviated from their basic line-up, she was ostracized. She’d scribble down her idea for a later time, perhaps a different professor, and, all the while, they never tried a single deviation of hers. She could not help it. Whether she was chopping ingredients, halfway through, or nearly finished, she would twitch and get an idea. She’d run to the pantry and add her own ingredient—her eyes alight—and they would see her actions and belittle her before all. Her food would be in the trash before another word was said. One day, she would be the greatest chef in the western hemisphere and cook for multitudes of grateful people, but today she would cook for their trash can.
He was of the subclass ever present in our western cities. He was ugly, with broken teeth, and matted hair. One of his feet didn’t sit right; it was always facing inwards. Those who walked by him, thought him a rat. They saw him limping along, dirty and sniveling, never looking up to notice them in their suits and sweat suits and designer blouses. “How dare he?” they thought, “Wouldn’t he want to be one of us? Shouldn’t he? Why, yes, by all means. It’s for his betterment.” But he limped along oblivious. He could not read the shop signs. He didn’t understand the father’s day sales. They were all just buildings, and he had seen buildings before. He didn’t like them. But he knew the pigeons, and each tree on each street. He knew the river, though he didn’t know where it went. No one had ever stopped to tell him that a world was out there. He knew the red brick as earth, and his place as his place. For all their thoughts, they said nothing, and he limped along, turning from young to old, satisfied at surviving in the city. That was until one day, when a very old man gave him a very meager boat and pointed downstream.
We never cared for the real name of the flowers, so we made our own. Every day so many danced in the winds that carried down our streets. Some days we rushed past them on our way, lost in our lives. While, in other times we sat beside them and admired the bit of wild amongst the barren city. They flourished throughout the year. There was one patch in particular that still comforts me. It was a rainy day, and she had lost something dear to her, and I met her beside our favorite grove, and got down to one knee, and she said yes, and we cried in the rain. I sit beside them now as though she were holding my hand, though she’s been gone for some years.