cloves and stock

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!