The delivery man left with a big grin, the last thing she saw before closing the door behind her. Then she looked at the bouquet. It's huge, with lots of white lilies and pink and yellow dragon snappers and other flowers she didn't know the names of. But it did not escape her, as it was intentionally placed in the center, the extremely red and perfect rose the size of her wrist. To be fair, she's a petite woman, and her wrists are quite small. Still. The bouquet is tied with an equally red ribbon, to which a small envelop is attached.
She placed it on the coffee table and, without giving another thought, went into the kitchen, poured some water in the whistler, and started to heat it up. Then she sat on one of the bar stools and started waiting. The bouquet wasn't in front of her, but her mind was dominated by it. But more precisely, the sender. She hadn't opened the small, pink envelop, but she knew from whom it came. She interrupted her thoughts momentarily by brusquely getting up and reaching for her soothing tea from the pantry. Her fingers danced around the inside of the box of teabags and eventually lifted up one, even though all of them were the same kind. She nervously put the box of the same kind of teabags back in the pantry and sat back down. She noticed that the whistler already started to steam. At some point, the screaming would start. The whistler is transparent; she could see as well as hear the boiling, when it did happen. But for now, her thoughts were focused like sunlight through a magnifying glass onto the bouquet that was in the other room.
That delivery boy, what was he smiling about? He was happy for me?
Her thoughts were distracted. She folded her hands and rested her lips gently on them. Then she opened them and covered her face to massage her eyes and forehead a little. That felt good.
The screaming started, and her thoughts were interrupted again. She got up, surprisingly less abrupt this time, and grabbed a mug before lifting the screaming whistler from the heat. All that two seconds of finding a suitable mug and grabbing it the whole kitchen was screaming, it seemed. Her thoughts were temporarily scattered but by doing so she wasn't so bothered by the screaming of the whistler.
Why today? What have I done?
She poured some of the boiling water into the mug, placed the whistler back on the stove, turned it off, and then poured out the mug of water that had warmed up the mug. Then she looked around for a second because she didn't know where she had put the tea bag her little, thin fingers had found a few minutes ago. Once found, the teabag was dumped into the hot, empty mug, and hot water was poured in to release the soothing essence. She set her tea timer to 3 minutes.
And there, she sat on the same bar stool, looking at the tea bag, as if she could see the molecules of soothing factors released. Her mind wandered, as she had anticipated, which was why she had a timer on, because her mind always wandered, especially with something as stressful as a bouquet of flowers with a big red rose the size of her wrist in the center.
among the wild
in the center a red heart
throbs for our freedom
Bad haiku. "Our" is two syllables. That was the text message she got that morning that woke up up. She has had rather restless sleeps, and a little chime from her cell phone could wake her up. "Among the wild", yes, the green leaves, the white lilies, the rest of the vegetation in the bouquet. "A red heart", mine? No. Ours? That's the idea, no? "Our freedom", of course. We aren't free now. But that's a misconception.
Then the timer beeps, shyly but persistently. She got a little annoyed at the wake-up call, and rudely turns off the timer. She steeped the teabag a little more in the mug of yellow liquid and put it on the little plate on which the mug was sitting. Honey? No, no honey. She was called "honey" just the previous day by the very sender. She sipped her chamomile and returned to her thought.
By the time she had finished, her heart was actually racing even faster. She was nervous. She decided that there would be no freedom. She was normal, she decided. She regretted giving the wrong impression to the sender, to the crazy woman who had fallen in love with her. She regretted leading her on.
I don't know why I allowed myself to be crazy.
Freedom was irrelevant. She was just lonely. She was probably desperate, that was why she flirted with that woman, to let her kiss her in the rain last week, let her think there was something, and now she probably thought her resistance was just fear of society.
No way; I am not a freak like her.
She drank the rest of the still warm yellow tea, put the used teabag back in the mug, and got up. She walked back to the living room with murderous hands. She picked up the bouquet and brought it to its place of execution: in front of the garbage pail.
You won't hear from me again.
Who's "you", she suddenly had the thought. She then noticed the smell of the lilies, and subtly, the smell of that red rose. Was it in her mind? She looked at the rose. And with tearful eyes she threw the bouquet in the garbage pail and closed the lid.
