somehow, it's always the beautiful things that make me sad, ultimately. and the most, as well.
or is time?
the dogwood in front of my building, which just a week ago was unrestrained with the display of its resplendent white flowers, is now one dull green head bobbing atop a diseased, dirty brown, gnarly trunk. gone is the spray of perfectly burst popcorns. all i have now is one tree gone lazy.
the cab i took this afternoon to a discount club made a wrong turn and we ended up passing by the new york botanical gardens. most of the once explosive blossoming trees peeking out by the gates - the cherry blossoms, the magnolias, the crab apples - have now slipped into their regular conservative uniforms. i couldn't bear to look at them long. what treachery.
at the discount club, right in the alley of the humungous 36 rolls in a pack of toilet papers, i thought i saw someone i was - how to say this without reducing to pure guck - enamored before. the way he swaggered, such strutting. but of course, he was not the one. he'd never be caught dead prowling a discount club. he of the ultimate hip pursuits.
as i ticked off my shopping list, i couldn't help but come up in my mind with a rough list, as well, on why we never lasted that long. somehow, a list, a numbered enumeration seems scientific, therefore more credible, than the stuttering of my memory.
but then all the reasons i could come up with, they all boil down to one thing. he was just too beautiful for me.
by the time i ended up in the queue by the lane of the lady cashier who was sporting this spindly honey blonde weave, i realized i forgot to grab some really needed toothpaste. but i reckoned i would certainly lose my spot in the line if i went back to the oral hygiene aisle. i'd still live. there's still an inch or two left in my current tube, i thought.
wheeling my cart towards the entrance, i was sided by the loudness of the bouquets of flowers displayed just at the mouth of the store. a hand scrawled sign was hung over the brash flowers and it said "when you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other."
for what, i thought while waiting for a cab home. just to see the lily wilt on me? enough of this pap about a thing of beauty as a joy forever.