She was a daffodil.
He liked daffodils. That is, he started liking this one after he had his heart pricked and bleeding for what seemed like the millionth time. He had always surrounded himself with red roses. His skills afforded him this hot testosterone dream job working with beautiful women. But roses have their thorns, and, one Wednesday afternoon, while nursing a cold cup of coffee in a café where the last rose had punctured his heart, he looked up and saw her sitting across him, alone and reading a heavy book: a daffodil. He wouldn’t have noticed her had he not been bleeding silently. In fact, he stared at her without focus – lacking conscious acknowledgment of her existence. He had gotten so used to feasting his eyes on shades of red – bloody, fiery and passionate -- and their long and elegant stems that, on this bleak Wednesday afternoon, he almost registered her simple yellow face as one of the quaint fixtures in the cafe. But something about her simplicity touched him like a soft kiss of the wind on a gentle sunny day. He smiled at her just as she looked up from her book. Her face betrayed a rapid sequence of puzzlement, hesitation, embarrassment and shyness. Then she softly blossomed and her smile was a comfort.
He needed comfort.
So he slowly eased into her life: thriving in her easy company; basking in her quiet awe of him. A season passed and he asked her to marry him. There was no rousing triumphant shout from the mountain tops when she said yes; only a quiet delight, like a giggle trapped inside a bubble.
She, on the other hand, considered falling in love with him to be the most significant moment of her life. She had always regarded herself as plain and uninteresting; without any real passion for anything. But he changed this. He became her passion.
When she moved into his home, she brought with her a small suitcase of her essentials: 8 outfits; 4 pairs of shoes; a hat; some toiletries; and, what he teasingly called, her “school marm” undies. Inside her old suitcase, too, tucked between 2 outfits was the most beloved of her belongings: her keepsakes box, a gift from her grandmother who raised her.
It was nothing fancy, this box of keepsakes. Her grandmother had kept her wedding ring inside its lightly lacquered body. On her deathbed, she beckoned her grand daughter, and, in her reedy voice, said: “Pawn the ring, Grand Daughter, and keep the box. Only place there the most precious of things – the most wonderfully pure.” Her grand daughter promised to do what she asked: she pawned the ring and paid the old lady’s medical bills; and kept the box empty, waiting for that most precious of things to place inside.
Her life with him was a warm glass of milk on a cold and rainy day; a comfortable, easy kind of love. In time she realized that he thrived on this uncomplicated routine with her. She knew about his many wounds. But never having had fallen in love before she met him, she had none and, therefore, had never fully understood why his scars still sometimes ache. She had inkling that he needed her but that she loved him more he loved her. She didn’t mind. She soon realized this: her love was the most precious thing in her life.
One day, he came home distracted and wired. He said it was nothing and she believed him. Weeks passed and she trusted him even when he started missing dinner. She kept faith in him even after he told her about his two-week business trip abroad. He returned tanned and happy; she accepted that most of his meetings took place along pool sides and golf courses. But one late evening, he came home and she stopped believing him.
He smelled faintly of roses.
She didn’t tell him that she knew. She waited for him to quietly end his affair but time passed and, instead, he started becoming sloppy at hiding it. His lies bordered on the ridiculous, adding insult to her quiet misery. He became more brazen, calling his rose from home, feigning a problem needed solving at work. Still she waited for him to get his fill of fiery passion and start yearning for her easy comfort again. But one day, in hushed tones, he told his rose that he loved her more than he had ever loved anyone. Hiding in the shadows, the daffodil heard his sincere declaration. She felt his words stab her heart, and as she felt the blood flow from her. More than her pain, her loudest thought at that moment was, “so this is how it feels.”
She knew then that her love was in jeopardy: that if she allowed his actions to keep wounding her, it would turn what was her most wonderfully pure into something vengeful and vile. So one night, while he lay sleeping, tired from their now rare obligatory coupling, she took out her keepsakes box, opened it, and put inside of it her most precious of things: her love for him. She whispered into its four corners the story of how he and she met; of how he had asked her to marry him after a happy bicycle ride on the sunniest of days. She confessed her pain, its depth a proof of her love’s intensity. She fought against despair and revealed her hopes. And as she whispered all of these into the lacquered void of the keepsakes box, she felt herself becoming lighter, as if slowly becoming hollow. Empty of secrets, she closed the lid and felt strangely that the little box now seemed heavier. She quickly dismissed this thought.
The next morning, as she served him breakfast, he noticed a difference about her. She was herself but somehow unfamiliar. He immediately suspected that she had found him out. Despite his arrogance, he owned up to moments of carelessness and, expecting confrontation, he treaded carefully in the next few days. She, however, remained as pleasant and as polite as before. He shelved the idea and vowed to be vigilant. More days passed and he completely threw the thought away -- he was certain that she was oblivious to his faithlessness for she showed no signs of suspecting despite his lukewarm lovemaking or late night sneak-ins. He smugly chalked this up to his stealthy ways and in his constant droning arrogance, he neglected to hear the faint voice in his head warning him that all is not what it appears to be.
Then, almost two years after it had begun, his happy existence shattered. His rose had not been totally forthcoming with him and had returned into the arms of her former lover. His mind went on holiday for a few weeks as he doggedly pursued his faithless rose. But she was gone.
One day, while nursing a cold cup of coffee during breakfast, he looked up and saw the daffodil as if, again, for the first time, and was filled with deep shame and remorse. He vowed to make up for his transgression but he soon realized that her ignorance of his disloyalty was not an outcome of his stealth – she simply no longer cared. She remained good to him but he knew that she no longer loved him. He accepted this as punishment for his deceit and spent years loving enough for the both of them, hoping that one day she would smile at him in quiet blossom just like in the café when they first met.
She was coming home from the grocery store when she died.
It was a bitterly cold February morning. Eager to get into the warmth of her car, she neglected to check her surroundings as she always did. A 19-year old boy high on meth came at her with a knife and stabbed her repeatedly even though she was already handing him her purse in exchange for her life. It cost about 27 cents, her life, because that was all that was inside her purse.
He could not bring himself to get rid of her things after the funeral and had to wait for almost a decade before he could go into her closet without breaking down. The years without her passed by painstakingly. The memory of their last moment together especially haunted him: it was an ordinary day; they pecked each other on the cheek and said goodbye as if it were any other day. It wasn’t. There was nothing ordinary about opening his door to two very uncomfortable policemen telling him his wife had died. That cold February morning became the most soul-shattering day of his life.
Now old and getting ready to part with material things, today he decided to look into her closet. Its doors creaked slightly from years of neglect. As soon as he opened it, a huge wave of love and sorrow pushed against him, almost literally knocking him to the floor. He looked on. She had always been simple and tidy; every bit of her belongings hung or stacked neatly in the nook and crannies of the shelves. He stared at these inanimate reminders of her and felt his heart beat slower, as if giving up. He did not bleed from having lost her for she was a daffodil, not a rose. She had no thorns. It was yearning that had halted his heart. He never fully experienced her love again after his transgression. Guilt constantly gripped his heart like a fist for he never had told her of his sin. And now, touching the garments that had once embraced her body, he wished he had told her. He wished for forgiveness.
Reverently, he moved the last of her things from the closet when he saw, at the very back of one of the shelves, her keepsakes box: its delicate lacquer dulled with age. He remembered vaguely that it used to belong to her grandmother, and that she had been quite protective of it when he wanted to see what was inside when she first moved in. She had told him casually that the keepsakes box was to remain empty until she could find the most precious of things to be placed inside. Shaking its little body now, he felt deeply regretful because he realized it had stayed empty. As he held the box she had always lovingly carried in her hands, he went numb. She was his comfort but he hadn’t been hers. He was her passion but he gave himself to her so tepidly. He was thinking of the things he could have done differently and how he never truly deserved her when he opened the keepsakes box.
Suddenly, a soft stream of wind rushed out of it and gently kissed his lips.
It swirled and whirled: growing bigger and stronger until it completely enveloped him in a pure and warm embrace.
Love!
Love!
Love!
His eyes welled up. He knew it was her. His daffodil loved him. She had loved him.
And the wind entered his being and flowed straight towards his heavy heart. It eddied around it, taking his soul into an endless field of golden daffodils… daffodils… daffodils. He floated and spun into perfect and pure golden Bliss.
And then, he felt forgiveness.
(May 18, 2007 - May 19, 2007, 6:44PM)