Sophie Kriegel 42 Yue Chen 52 Vanessa Hu

FLOWER SELLER by Vanessa Hu

he stands guard next to his sunflowers, its petals glistening with tap water shaken out of a leaky hose. i don't remember how much they cost.

i never have time to observe the laminations, always scurrying by the tulips defying their plastic wrappers. i tend to rush by — one eye grazing the bamboo, the other slid towards the nearby mexican restaurant's papel picado patterns flapping in the windbursts that trail taxi drivers and stroller pushers. i can never look him nor his posies in the eye either — how could i?

how could i cup their gaze in an iris without paying them to wink at me?

i'd rather give triple the salary of a pocketful of peonies that could sing goodnight — to instead see a garden, pruned and clean, shaved into tight braids and forced kisses and grand choirs in unison. since that's preferable, to spread a skirt across a rosebed and snap a polaroid, instead of stroking the bush, mulching the soil, mourning the wilt. only botanists believe in the waxing of moons and poetics, not the majority of cactus-pokers that dump liquid until the spikes garble — and still scratch their heads at why it's drowned.

anyway, i have enough trouble taking care of myself. drinking milk til it sours in my teeth, catching fruit flies with apple cider vinegar, arranging lace around my chest in some way that will satisfy. who has the time to snip stems tender, to rustle petals so they don't bow to the counter, to whiff rot and know it's time to rinse out the vase and toss out the shriveling bodies? and so i walk by, promising that i'll i'll finally buy a bouquet, however much it is to sell multiple timelines, when i move out: so i can take them on the drive through lincoln tunnel, all our heads bobbing in the musty air in such a sonic boom that we forget there is an end at all.