The Dilapidated Sunflowers on 116


The tinfoil wrapped around the stems roughly fit in the clasp of my fist. I saw him walking away before I understood it was he who pushed them into my palm; his midnight skin caked with dirt and sweat, and his big, crooked smile and jaundiced eyes peering behind him at my reaction. Why sure, my shirt was low-cut and about an inch of my midriff was showing, but I wasn’t expecting a bouquet of sunflowers— no matter how many petals were brown and loosely attached. I blushed lightly at the hearty laughs my friends shot at me, and thick stares emanating from the mocha colored skinned family with a stroller. I held them tight as the C train approached and the doors opened, and close to my chest as the exchange of people began: business men stepping lightly onto the yellow floor of the subway while short women with long braids and ukuleles placed their sandaled feet on the concrete of the platform. I stood my ground as the train started and we left the 116th street station.

I was caught pettily picking at the petals and smoothing the foil around the bottom of the bunch, and my friend reminded me that they were picked up from the top of a garbage can right before they were handed to me. Not knowing that previously, I loosened my grip on the stems, however keeping them close. I felt a strange connection to the dead, decrepit, premature flowers.


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She pushed his hand away from her hip as he struggled to keep her close. Her blonde hair became stringy with rainwater and her tears weaved themselves in with the voluptuous raindrops. Through gritted teeth and matted lipstick she croaked a deep, painful string of words that brought him to scream hoarsely. I hate you, she screeched. She repeated it over and over again until the rancor in her voice stole the meaning from the word’s breath. I hate you. I hate you. He loosened his grip with a bone-tensing weakness but ran after her as she stumbled down the stairwell into the dry heat of 116th street station. She was now aware that he, too, had been crying, leaving war streaks beneath the red of his eyes. She jumped on the train that had its doors already opened, and he pried the closing doors open, but her back was turned and his biceps weak. He let the doors close on her, on his love. His head was heavy and his heart was cold, so he sat at the foot of the steps marked with faded sharpie signatures and worn with other’s paths. He put his sagged-haired head between his knees and let the acrimony fall from his lips and his harsh love for her leak from his eyes. His cheeks burned as he pressed his head against the cold stonewall as he hiccupped and leeched for air. The sunflowers he clung tightly to became limp and sore from suffocation; his hands held so tightly as if to keep her in his mind.
He couldn’t understand how but hours before she sat on his lap spider-style and kissed him with her last waking breath. He had pulled her closer by the nape of her neck and typed his way down her vertebrae to the small of her back, where his hand lingered and he realized he was in love, which enthused his passion, while they exchanged the last breath left on earth, shared between the two of them. She pulled back and they looked at each other for some time, until she bashfully giggled and looked down to where she stroked his bare forearm. He grabbed the sunflowers from the vase, already bound with the silver foil. He pulled out a loose one and tucked it behind her ear where it seesawed stiffly. He placed the rest on the hammock of her dress and she smiled and kissed him again. He loved her he loved her he loved her.
But now he traced the words on the steps, written in scripted angst that read: this aggression will not stand. She was gone. He was calming down now, releasing whimpers like a cold dog and used his ultimate strength to bend his knees and go home. He dramatically laid the flowers down across the volt of the garbage can. A tombstone for her.

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I dragged my feet across the paved sidewalk of New York and let the flowers hang by my side. I let my friends leave me behind. Crouching down near a thick tree with a broken glass bottle and a ripped magazine cover, I perched the flowers against the tree. I stood up, admiring my art, and walked, with my head keeping an eye on them. The dirty faded brown petals fluttered with the September night wind but the stems hung strongly. I saw the fingered imprints in the foil where I held the flowers. I hoped someone would recycle them until they were but a pile of ripped she loves me petals and another story to tell.