The Flowers

This is the room where I fell out of love with Danton Flowers as lightly as a dew drop from a rose cup, although I continued to be in love with the chimera of that love for another decade.

Here is the bench where I kissed the tramp who might have been Father Christmas, or my dead father still drunk, still mourning, or a character by Charles Dickens.

Here is the city, bright with commerce, unaware of the lacy ghosts of Danton Flowers and I, in love, confused, wordless in the darkness of each other’s spell.

Here is the underground bar where he introduced me to his wife, who was so dazzlingly fair, who fluttered so, the tragic butterfly, impaled on the pin of her love. Her pallid voice, questioning him, lingers here.

Here is the river, glittering beyond the trees like a vein of mica. Here is the park, where I wandered that night. Here is the avenue, graced with slow-moving trams, that sweep its length like Victorian ladies.

Here is the train station, that pulls at my heart still, where the train came, that took me away.

Oh, why pretend!

Here I am, decades late, looking for things to touch that remind me of the Flowers.

I was always between them, like a child between its parents, like a child burrowing into its parents’ bed.

They were unbreakable, the only certainty. That is what I saw then in that darkened bar. Her hair glowing about her patient face.

And I was? A mouse he laid at her feet.

It staggers me now. That I escaped them!

But not my love for him, the sickly residue, that ate holes into everything that followed after. And not my shame, for whatever indentations I might have made upon her heart. And not my sorrow, that I had not been heartless or heartstrong enough to stay and overcome her. And not my sadness, that he remained both bitter at my defection, and blind to the fact that I had never left him.

For I am there now, there all-those-many-years-ago, as much or more as I am here, there still, in love with both the Flowers, adoring her as a courtesy to him.

It was nothing! An episode.

Oh, yes. It excised the living part of me, left me shadowy in all my presents, placed dull-stained glass between all pleasure and myself.

It was love, only love. A silly love affair, barely consummated. Not. Why quibble, or dissemble now? Unconsummated.

How can I explain this? I would perish, I remember thinking, if we came that close.

How chaste we were! How careful I was to steal nothing that was not mine. How cowardly. How empty all the days and months that followed.

Now all these years…

Does he lie awake and wonder now? I doubt it. Does he taste her tears still? They have long since parted. And I was not the last, the first.

It is not a real thing, this love.

But, look! I touch my talismans, the station wall, the bar, the steaming river bank, the cold air of this city that holds my heart.

If I could leave now, leave with my heart intact, tear the lacy ghosts of Danton Flowers and I apart as if I were her –

But I am not her. How ridiculous my donation now seems. I gave her the very best of me, unasked.