I left a rose on his windshield. I got there just a little bit early and tucked the brownies I’d brought under my arm, tucked the thorny green stem beneath the wiper and slicked back one tiny red petal into place. I left a rose on the windshield of his massive, old truck, checked that it was perfect, and walked away.
I wonder if it lasted through the rain. The storming, violent rain that soaked my heart and skin and left me clammy, my clothes plastered fast against my bones and a deep unsettling cold seeping into the ribs of my teeth. I wonder if the petals washed away down the dirty blue hood, and caught on the license plate as I stood out, beaten down by those sheets and sheets of black water falling, and if the leaves were stuck fast against the glass, mashed by torrents, torn away.
I wonder if it fell apart bodily, or only in the subtler ways that I did, when the rain hit.
I heard the first droplets striking the roof as I stood in the mouth of the corridor DROP and I stared down the length of the wall DROP focusing DROP tunnel vision DROP stopped DROP! at his lips, on her neck, embraced. I let the rhythm, pounding, driving -- I let the stolid force of weather take my feet and I did not walk back past his car or past the million pieces of memory that smelt just like him, brought out, puddling, soaking from the rain of my heart, of the sky. I did not stop back to check if the rose had remained, where I’d left it to congratulate him, to surprise him and to ask him without having to ask.
I hope that it didn’t.
I hope that he didn’t see it as he was driving home, anonymous against the glass and without context. I hope that she didn’t show that she was angry when she knew it was from someone else and I hope she didn’t have the chance to lie and wonder if she should lie and not know if she should say that it was her, on his night, leaving a rose for him when she knew he would find her in his bed. I hope that he didn’t picture me, out in the rain, hair matted against my face screaming out at the thunder when he saw (or didn’t see) that rose. I’ll never know.
... But I’ll wonder.