On the Suboptimal Conditions For Growing Roses
He wonders if one day he’ll awake to find himself a cockroach.
He’s never noticed before, but there are a couple of flowers growing in the field behind the apartment. Good year for the roses at least, he thinks to himself. Then, what the fuck does that even mean?
It was clear she’d had it done in her head for days, maybe weeks before. Her telling him was just a formality. An exit interview. He’d certainly felt underdressed in those Stewie Griffin pajama pants. There was nothing to argue, no concessions to be made. It was, and then it wasn’t. Simple.
He thought that with her out, with all her furniture gone and her stuff off the walls, that the apartment would feel empty. But he was wrong. There was something in the space she used to occupy, the corners where the light didn’t quite reach, the rooms he had just left or was about to enter.
It was seltzer bubbles, radio static. It was electric darkness. It wasn’t, and yet it was.
He feels uncomfortable in his skin. It’s as if it no longer fits. He wonders if he can slough it off, shed it and emerge anew. He tries, a little, but it sort of itches and hurts. He puts on lotion instead. That seems to do the trick.
How many coats of paint have been put on these same apartment walls? There must be hundreds of people living in this building, all of them existing right above his head. Sometimes he feels crushed by the sheer mass of them. Their bodies, their lives, the weight of their collective dreams. It’s enough to make him lose sleep.
He tries reading eastern philosophy and finds it a lot like western philosophy, which he now remembers he doesn’t like. He goes for a run. Eats healthy for a while, but it doesn’t really stick. Work’s work. The ice cream cone licks itself. It’s the time in-between that’s harder.
The stab of betrayal. Drinking, tv, his phone. They smile in his face, sure, but behind closed doors they plot his demise. Parasites, bloodsuckers, knife-sharpeners.
Et tu, Vanderpump Rules?
He ponders cyclical time. Ouroborous. Can a snake really ever finish eating its own tail? Who cares. He gets a haircut.
The flowers behind the apartment are gone the next time he looks. Maybe somebody picked them, or else they died. Not such a good year for the roses after all, he thinks. This makes him laugh for a while. Actually, they might have been peonies.
He wonders if one day he’ll awake to find himself a cockroach. He doesn’t.
He wonders if something begins after the beginning has ended.
It does.
Eventually.
Gordon currently lives in New York City. His writings have been rejected by some of the world's premier literary magazines.
