Frog Eyes – A Flower in a Glove
And you were always a botanist at heart, I think, stopping to smell the roses, literally, for as long as I knew you. Or pointing out lilacs or hyacinths or rhododendrons when we saw them in the park.
And you were always finding odd places to cram flowers into your third floor apartment. Hanging pots, a stove that didn’t work because instead it had rows of buds under a sunlamp, bookshelves devoted to a mess of bright, growing colors. My favorite was a single pink lotus in a blue glove, hanging by a nail outside the window. You would tenderly bring it back inside during rough weather.
And you were always bringing flowers to me at work. You’d show up with a silly grin and one hand inside your jacket. When the hand came out, so did your latest present. I kept them all, lined my cubicle with them, watered and cared for them as you would have. It didn’t seem to bother you to give them away, as long as you kept growing more.
And you were always talking about leaving, about going somewhere with more exotic species and more tracts of land to make into gardens. We – I – thought you were just talk. We thought you’d stay forever, in your third floor apartment with the flower in the glove hanging out the window.
And you were always saying sorry when you accepted the job. Always apologizing that it didn’t work out between us or telling me you’d come back in a few years. But you were always going to go.
And me, I will wait for your love; I shall wait for your love. I shall wait for love, here in this third floor apartment, meticulously watering the flowers.
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Waiting for love is a bitch. That’s why you don’t wait for it.