Carnations for Mom

The shine struck the building in the West. Its brightness deceived the sky as the midday storm rolled in. My shoe scuffed the spine of the concrete. The weather was the same all week; we had sunny mornings until about 1:00 when the clouds crawled in. I would've preferred they stayed but they always left before 5:00. The sweater I wore that day wasn't comfortable. It was that texture that isn't itchy but almost could be. It doesn't matter, Marie got it for me. I make my way up the staircase.

Work was slow all day, as if its a surprise. It's never been fast. Every phone call was performed worse than any middle school play, and just as slow. I worked on the seventh floor of the GeneralMax on Green St. and 89th Ave., it was a wide room separated into a million squares, mine the farthest from any window on the floor. I measured once, actually, and it isn't true, Drew's is the farthest but it feels just the same.

I drag my body to the edge.

The flower shop used to be around the corner. I can see it. That's where we met. Her hair was short and brown but her features were blurred from the rain pelting the glass between us. I walked in and wetted the floor with my shoes and the rain as it dripped from my coat. I had no one to buy flowers for. I realized that when I got to the counter and stuttered and stared for a few moments in the midst of that one type of rush. I told her that my mother was very sick, and I was bringing her her favorite flowers: carnations. She said something sentimental but I couldn't think straight. I paid for the flowers, left, and threw them away outside of my apartment building, by then the rain had stopped and the sun began peaking through the sky.

I did this every week for a month, by then I had read her name-tag and began calling her by her name: Marie.

It was September when my mother "recovered," and I invited Marie for lunch. We were together for four years. Now I look along the skyline for my city and I no longer find her.

Years were empty, and so were the months. The days would change but ultimately every moment was relived, a cycle repeating everyday. Without her. The flower shop was long gone, while GeneralMax had opened twelve new telemarketing centers across the nation. I didn't drink when she passed, I was never a drinker, I always let it pulse through me. I'm an object for my mind to pass through, and when it is done so may I be.

I never smoked, either. My mom smoked but she still made it to 90 somehow. Marie was killed when a teen from another state opened fire onto her church. I was never religious, that was the difference between me and her. But if I was, maybe I could've been there and done something. I can fake it, I can pretend to believe. If that's all I have to do, I can go back and do it. My beliefs don't hold much integrity either way. If I knew that it would end then, I would've joined her in a heartbeat.

So now, I pray to you in hopes that this will finally relieve me and allow me to be closer to my Marie. I pray that this wasn't for nothing and even if it was all a lie, at least I won't have to exist alone anymore. And I now fall with the rain.