He hadn’t the heart to smell the flowers. Though he knew—he was sure—their virile pinks forged this square and founded it as the center of the universe. He knew there were creatures drooling in ships somewhere above, perhaps eating popcorn, and he wasn’t scared to break out of character, step off his mark, to leave the crowd and smell, shove his nose in the soft petals and breath that sweet, sickly smell of the earth in dying heat. No, he wasn’t scared. Not of the other people commuting by, plugged in and slacked up. He wasn’t fearful of the universe above, of stars playing tug of war or asteroids taking aim. He wasn’t fearful of the monsters in the dark; he was sure they felt love too, and he knew their furried paws might accept the glass and clink it alongside his and maybe they could drink side by side and watch the galaxies turn together, and, just for one night, men and monsters could let bygones be bygones.
No, he wasn’t scared of any of it. But, like any honest creature, he had no wish for pain. He was deadly serious about that.
The same rose plants blossomed there every year. They had done so for as long as he had lived here and walked by the square, as he always did, in the late spring. They had been there when he saw her. When they first scooted their chairs up to the outdoor table and drank and sweat in the night. He could still remember, today, the sight of the drops, reflecting the hanging lights, glowing as they slid down her neck, halting, hanging at the ridge of her breast bone, before following the streaks down her blouse and out of sight. The memory draws a quivering sigh from him now, as some prehistoric doctor drew poison from some doomed king long before this square and rose bushes graced this side of the world.
He remembers on:
That night, the way they stumbled by them, his sneakers acting as though they didn’t recognize that familiar asphalt and then how she spoke of them wistfully, as if the flowers had already withered and died, as though she’d outlast them.
She spoke of many things that way.
And he’s flooded by sights of their kitchen, two pink roses in a simple vase above their sink. Of warm nights and the buzz of the bug light and the defiant insects floating about in the air. Of that sweat, plaguing him and painting her, how they sat together and watched the dying of the spring and the promise of summer. He sees their bed, with sheets wet, drying only for the day hours before they returned and made it theirs once more. So many nights, once more. That is how he remembers it now.
He utters a prayer, or a curse, he cannot tell, and no one should be listening anyways. Maybe it’s a wish, in the childish venture of wishing for things that will never come true. He says the words to himself, as he avoids the gaze of the pink roses.
“Once more.”
And he can’t stop to smell the roses because the petals are her skin, and it’s the only part of her that comes back every year and he can’t bear another conversation with them.