Watch the Pretty Flowers.

(Something from before but recently updated...thought this would be a good place for it. © Melissa Melton '08)

It's all about watching the flowers for now.

From here, I cannot see them yet. The alarm clock's incessant beeping, signaling my last day in this shitty room just went off and my eyes won’t fully adjust for five minutes yet. I haven’t yet reached the cracked, weatherworn leather chair I sit in from five to five everyday. Not yet. Five more minutes.

I used to hate the daily torture I have inflicted upon myself for so long in that ugly, abused chair. The maid doesn't even bother knocking anymore. The place is a wreck, I know, and the thought makes me smile every time. I take my place in the chair I've come to know so well, still smiling.

Now, near the end, I’ve finally learned to admire the flowers my hotel room window's view affords me. Flowers only ask for sun and rain from the sky and a bee to come along and rub up against their petals every now and then. They don’t want for bigger and better than that. They don’t suddenly uproot and interrupt the pattern and flow of life. They don’t ask for fifty percent of another flower’s stuff and the garden all to themselves to put that stuff in. They don’t suddenly want to grow life-threateningly close to other species of flowers. It takes the whole world to stop turning before a flower’s petal will wilt before its time. Courageous and trustworthy, that’s what flowers are.

Outside the glossy, overdone picture window in front of my thrift store chair, a whole garden of exotic flowers stand strong in their claim for air. When he isn’t out, there isn’t any diversion to take. When I'm free of mind-murdering diversions, I have time to stare at the flowers and blank out the whole disgusting world around me. Roses are my favorite, but not for the reason everyone says roses are their favorite. Roses win what's left of my dying heart because they have both sides: beautiful, majestic softness in red ruby velvet that arcs and dips just so; but underneath those lush petals sprout the thorns, just waiting for thin skin to come and try to pluck. Smaller thorns hurt worse than the bigger, more obvious daggers, but only because the victim doesn’t even realize he’s been cut until he tries to pull his fingers away. Once a rose had been held, it’s the pulling away that makes its captor bleed. I spent so many hours staring through a lens at this man that I deserve to stare at the flowers for a little while longer in peace. The flowers don’t ask for much and they don’t take anything either. I have ten minutes left.

When my wife left me for Bag, at first I was so angry I couldn’t see anything straight for days. Drinking only made the effect worse, so I stopped before I fully opened that Pandora’s Box. These are the times when thinking straight is so much more important than blind anger, but it hurts to focus this hard. Motivation is so much more important than heated revenge. I just have to keep it in the forefront.

I watch them everyday. From five to five, me and the flowers. And them.

It’s funny the details I catch through my lens. Like the sleek scar Bag attempts, badly, to cover with some kind of makeup on his right cheek. The scar is perfect in its own way—almost as if he bought a scar appliqué at a Halloween supply store to build fake character. Too bad his scar isn’t jagged, ugly, and discolored in some shade of plum purple or red, standing out awkwardly against the rest of his faux-tanned skin. I’m sure I could come up with a better nickname for him than Bag if it was. What pisses me off most is the knowledge that his scar wasn’t engraved in anger. It’s too seamless for that. No one tried to hurt Bag on purpose. He probably just had some meaningless accident.

I call the man Bag because he always wears a fanny pack. Never fails to forget it. So far it’s his only flaw. From the way he saunters down the sidewalk, I can tell he honestly believes he is legitimately okay in adorning the brown leather pouch at his waist. I really doubt such a thing can be considered 80s retro, if that is what he’s going for. Fanny packs just do not look right on anybody. Not ever. Not even on country-western city tourists over the age of 70 who never leave the house without a windbreaker and a pair of looming black cataract glasses. There’s no justifiable reason for such a thing. It does not matter if the only item he totes in that pack is a note scribbled with the hotline number of God’s personal assistant or a pack of tissues or a container of aspirin or his house keys and credit cards. Fanny packs are a sign of ignorance, mental decrepitude, and a distaste for society at the very least. Bag has never even opened that stupid ancient waist hugger in all this time as I have watched him, either. But not knowing what’s inside doesn’t bother me at all. Only one question claws at my insides like a rabid animal in the dark: how can she fuck a man who wears a fanny pack?

When Shanna left me, she took everything but some residual carpet lint and the faint scent of her strawberry shampoo with her. If she had a crowbar and one more bad day, she would have been able to get the kitchen sink in with that order too. Luckily, water faucets were not something as close to her heart as scarred, tanned men who wear fanny packs. Either that, or Shanna remembered she will get half of the kitchen sink court ordered to her door in a few months anyway.

At first I was so intimidated by his too tan, well-beyond-chiseled shoulders, I thought to myself that I’d leave me for him to. I could never pull off that $5 paperback romance Latin lover look. I cannot pull off the light leisure suits over ice cream-colored shirts and boat shoes in the fall look. I can't even wear a pair of white pants without spilling something of a spaghetti sauce-red origin on them, rendering them useless for anything other than car wash rags or ghetto Halloween costume pieces. Unfortunately, common grace, even in small doses for men, cannot be purchased at a department store.

As I have watched the roses bloom and die and bloom again from this chair, I wonder if it’s because I could have given Shanna more flowers. I tried to do so many other things, but none of it would please her. I know she knew there weren’t any other, more pressing tasks for me to accomplish. I could have brought her bundles and vases of so many varieties; she never would have even had time to smell them all—to appreciate them all properly. I could have told her I loved her every single day. I would only have been lying half the time.

But it’s a conundrum. I don’t want to let someone else give her the flowers I never did. And she never got close enough to me to appreciate my scent. Or check for thorns.

Like the one I hold now in my lap, loaded, for 12 hours every day. If I hadn’t bought the one with the telescopic lens, I never would have noticed the scar and the fanny pack Bag wears, and in my opinion, it’s just one more reason he needs to die anyway. Maybe he doesn’t deserve death for stealing the woman I only half-loved; maybe he has to die just because…

Ten minutes are up.