A Weekly Arrangement

I know your order by scent before I see you—lilies, always lilies, that quiet kind of white, the kind used for altars, for memorials, for weddings when people still believed in vows holding through worse.

You write the same name on the delivery slip. The same hospital. “My wife,” you said, like that should have been obvious.

You come every Thursday, 4:52 p.m. The shop closes at five. Always just in time. You smell like rain and vending machine coffee. Your wedding band—worn, gold, tight from the cold—glints as you sign the card.

Sometimes I imagine her—your wife. Her body gone small under the machines. I imagine the room with the blinking monitors, and the stale air, and the lilies slowly opening in their vase while no one looks. I imagine her eyes open and not seeing. I imagine your hands, still warm from touching her, now resting on the glass countertop between us.

You’re still wearing the same navy sweater, too thin for the weather, sleeves fraying.

And I—god, I shouldn’t—I press the blank cards to my chest when you leave, just for a moment. Just to feel what you might be feeling. Just to see if it leaves a mark.

Sometimes I think it must be awful to love someone who refuses to die.

And sometimes I wonder what it would feel like if you ever looked at me like that—like I was the room you returned to, not the one you left behind.