about your white roses.

understanding is painful. not knowing can be bliss, like all ignorance is famed to be. it really depends, and she gets it one day, finally. it really depends on how much you loved them.

 

 

 

 

 

tradecraft is the last resort for one, twelve the first and best choice one could ever have. this inadvertently implies that tradecraft is nothing, unnecessary because seen through. one for twelve, tradecraft for one, preyed on by the jury, left behind to the scavengers of sub-Saharan Africa.

 

 

 

 

i’m going to break down this fucking door, he tells her one day, if you don’t come out right now.

 

she lets him try.

 

 

 

 

hey, hey, hey, twelve friends are on our wedding invitations, gold letters on white on two-ply card stock. she designed them. do you think we’re missing anyone? hey.

 

 

 

 

she wishes she had the nerve to call him back and spit, no one fucking cares. totally inaccurate, misworded statement, but her heart hurts like hearts do sometimes, raw and blistering between her teeth, swallow only to find it swelling in your epiglottis. a lot of people fucking care: twelve, one, wedding invitations with gold letters on white two-ply card stock. she just doesn’t. three AM whiskey flushes the thoughts down, head buzzing to sitting on the floor, back against the door. she can hear the Sunday morning cartoons start up from here. he’d like the Looney Tunes.

 

 

 

 

hey, you know, uh, you know what? could you pick up the flowers from the florist on twenty-second street next Wednesday? the white roses with opaque mist? they’re her favorite. there should be three orders under her father’s name. yeah, don’t fucking ask me why.

 

 

 

 

i have the whole team with me, he says, we won’t hesitate to use force if you don’t come out right now.

 

she wonders if this is because she never gave the check to the florist.

 

 

 

 

i’m so nervous for tomorrow. do you think i’ll be able to walk to the church without driving away? this is the person i am dedicating my life to, leaving twelve friends behind. do you think i’ll be lonely? do you think they’ll, she’ll be nervous, too? do you believe in getting cold feet and not regretting your freezing toes? i’m so fucking nervous, just tell me it’ll be alright, hey, tell me it’s alright.

 

 

 

 

it’s 4 and she’s paralyzed with anxiety. back against the wall, sitting on the floor, some Korean pastor giving a sermon on the television screen. she lights a cigarette with shaking fingers and crosses her legs, one over the other. the toes of her right feet graze her left ankle. they are ice cold.

 

 

 

 

i’m going to break the fucking door down now, he continues, exasperated. she can hear the teeth gritted in his voice. go ahead, she doesn’t say.

 

maybe this, in some strange retrospect, is salvation. an intervention, governmental, societal, individual. she’ll be seeing twelve, she assumes. she’ll be seeing twelve someday, soon.

 

 

 

 

there’s one message in her answering machine. pick up, pick up, pick up, listen, i didn’t know, i didn’t know you, i didn’t know what you were feeling –

 

i’m sorry.

 

 

 

 

understanding, not knowing, ignorance, they all end up in the same place. steel manacles and prison bars, the imaginative delusion you lived in for a while, when you thought twelve wouldn’t save you, one didn’t tell you, and tradecraft was all you had.