She’ll be out today. A lovely
homecoming for Carmindy.
In the two months of her absence
from his life Devin has ordered seventeen dozen bouquets of sunflowers and purple
matsumotos, her favorite ones, which he plans to strew about her little
apartment. He’s got the keys from her mother and in that sunny week before she
returns he’s mopped, reset, and cleared up the things so precious to her in
that space. He loves the warm colors on the thin walls, plastered in orange,
blue, and white frames. They’re filled with her lives in Madrid, Brooklyn, and
Ici Ice Cream—that particular photograph of her and her dog Maxie, both dribbling brandied
cherry and saliva, it sure was priceless.
Carmindy will be back. And when she
is Devin is sure of how much she’ll love that her CDs and Vinyl are scattered
in the corner on her braided lilac rug where the wine stains never came out.
The red marks are the premise for the mystery novel she was bent on writing
after college.
Her shoes. That girl and her pairs
on pairs of flats and boots and the filmy jelly shower shoes with the Brazilian
flags on the heels. Devin looks under her brass bed, lifting away the neatly
draped white cotton comforter, to eye with admiration the thoughtfully kept boxes
of silken London Soles in various pastels. She’d always have a sparkle in her
eye when she wore a pair and told their friends that Devin bought them all for
her 24th birthday.
It’s been two years since. The
apartment was there then, and now it is glowing, more than ever. Devin’s only
wish is for the rest of the street to shine, for the apricot trees lining the
sidewalks to blossom in this winter and the red-winged blackbirds to sing
loudly in their sharpest notes that melody she and him heard one Saturday evening
after their first date.
They were idly standing in the
middle of the newly-tarred street under the apricots, waiting for the stars to
come out. On that spot Devin had a feeling she would be someone he’d love
forever.
She’ll be out today. Carmindy gets
out of the hospital, but she won’t be alive when she does.
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