Rose Petals

She watches him set the knives and forks on the table, slowly, as though arranging a piece of artwork, perfecting the angles, imagining a table symbolising something else, becoming something else, and maybe it is, maybe he is an artist and the table is his work and she is his muse. And this is how it could be.

But it is not.

It started and ended the same way, only completely differently; china cups containing English tea, awkward pauses, the weak sunshine of a partially cloudy Spring day, and the tabletop covered in carved roses. These wooden roses that inadvertently symbolise romance, bear witness to romance, but also other things that happen more regularly, like ordinary Sunday mornings, weak tea with too much sugar, and the study of the television guide. And then the opposite of romance, which is not opposite but connected; the consequence, the thing that follows on after endings which aren't really endings at all. Opposite, or what follows, and we follow, and that is all we can do.

She says she is sorry, or not sorry, or both.

And there is a butterfly resting on the window pane, opening and closing its wings.

All of this passed her by. Was she asleep the entire time? Was she curled up into a shape she can no longer make because she got too old? Did he hold her hand, fit it together with his like people try to do? How long was she there? 20 years is a long time. 20 years is no time at all. He was ill-fitting in the end, she realises, like the jumper she adored but that never really suited her. She tried. She tried.

It ended at the carved rose table, an antique so beautiful and strong she thought it could last forever and perhaps it will. As for the things that live, well, they all end, they fall away like rose petals, they die, they cannot be preserved like wood carvings or even within the pages of a book, framed under glass, flat, without time.

And the knives and forks remained at right angles to one another the entire time, unmoving, symbolising nothing other than a meal not eaten; appetites not satisfied.