She stepped on his
porch, glancing once again over both shoulders to make sure his car was nowhere
in sight. It was a beautiful day in
March, the kind that would have felt cool had it been in May, but after a long
and cold winter almost felt like summertime.
And although the grass was still brown and dry, and the trees still cold
and bare, she swore she could smell a hint of growth in the air. However, as nice as the day was, she didn't
feel that same sunshine in her heart.
She turned around and sat down on the steps, willing herself to hold it
together. She never planned for it to
end up this way--she was never supposed to tell him like this! He was supposed to tell her first, or figure
it out on his own, or maybe she could have even told him in a grand way and he
would understand. Yet instead here she
was, leaving an abandoned, coded message on his porch, only to run away once
again. Speaking of running away--she
checked her watch--the train would leave soon. She'd better be going. She looked down at her hands, where she held
a bouquet that she had made herself. It
was filled with cloves, cyclamens, white monte casinos, stock, and red and pink
carnations.* Holding her bundle of
flowers up to her face, she finally let a few tears fall from her eyes,
trailing onto the petals. She breathed
in the sweet scent of them, and breathed out a goodbye. She set them down on the porch and turned to
go, pulling an index card out of her pocket.
He probably would not find the message in the flowers, but the words on
the card were something that both he, a reader, and she, a writer, would
understand. You, my friend, she read out loud, were
the worst, most awful character I could dream up in my own life story. Not because you were easy to hate, but
because you were so easy to love. And I
was not so easy to love in return.
And with that, she walked away without a second glance, leaving her own
tragedy on the way to catch her train.
*The meanings of the
flowers are as follows, using Victoria's Dictionary of Flowers from The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh
Clove - I have loved
you and you have not known it
White Monte Casino -
patience
Cyclamen - timid
hope
Red Carnation - my
heart breaks
Pink Carnation - I
will never forget you
Stock - you will
always be beautiful to me
If you enjoyed this, check out my new blog http://imperfectlyandwithoutroots.wordpress.com/, where I'll be writing short stories on the meanings
of different kinds of flowers. But don't worry, I'll still be posting on here too!
