Poem: He loved her ~*NOT*~

She didn't know
how long she would have to wait,
but she knew it would take
a while longer,
more time spent
sitting outside in the rain,
on cold stone steps
that would be too hot in a few months.

The entire city world seemed
tinted grey where the rain touched it,
even the flower she'd taken from a tree
just an hour before.
The petals, all bright pink
and thick yellow pollen,
invited plucking to the
familiar static hum of
"he loves me, he loves me not."

Though it mattered not
what the flowers said,
the thought occurred
that small omens
indicate the biggest things,
and she nearly ruined the bud with anxiety.

She refrained, however, and
squinted her eyes through the rain,
looking for a wanted shape
to come down the shining sidewalks.
Holding out the flower
in the hopes that rain would revitalise it
(for it had already wilted, off its branch and useless now),
she realised that she had
never noticed how much
flower petals felt like lips,
(or how lips feel in dreams and adolescent fantasies).

She pictured just how it would be
when he came by.
They would smile at each other,
unsure of how to bring together the months apart,
and he would tease her for
the bookbag overstuffed
with textbooks and graded tests.
She would show him the flower,
expecting to be teased,
and he would smile that shocking smile
(white teeth against dark skin never fails to make a lasting contrast).

And she would reach up
and he would bend down
and they would kiss, in the rain,
as she had always thought
nothing more romantic
than a kiss in the rain
(pity the soul educated in romance from songs and poetry).

Though she called him her "sunshine,"
her "only sunshine,"
he was not there to
make her happy underneath
the grey, lowering clouds.
And so she took the flower
and worried one petal between her lips,
tasting stillbirth and earth and all her wanting.
As she released it,
it fell off,
and thus began the counting.

He loved her.

She had not meant to do it
(neither the counting
nor the loving),
but it happened organically,
as flowers bloom from
dead trees and form
green elastic leaves.

He loved her not

and another petal
came off the stalk,
this time pulled by
her tiny fingers.
She meant it
this time, all of it,
the loving and the
repetition and the
sweet agony of waiting.

At the third petal, she
started to wonder whether
he was going to be
there, if she were only
waiting for something
that was not going to be.

He loved her.

But that wasn't the point.
The next petal would say
he loved her not
and so she decided
it was best to leave
the count unfinished.
Without the petals to
occupy her mind and hands,
she noticed other things:
the sheen of water on
woolen sweaters,
how rain can be easily
mistaken for tears.

But the flower was not
dead yet, and she had
more time than idle
observation could fill up.

He loved her not.

She threw the petal onto
the sidewalk so some
unknowing stranger would
step on it and do her a
great service.

He loved her.

She kissed the petal as
if it were the he she thought of.

He loved her not.

There were no more
petals to wrench answers
from, and he was not there.
She had the sneaking
suspicion that he never
would be there.

She left the wet stone for
the dry comfort of a bus, and
then her apartment, where
she could take a towel
and a mug of tea
and forget the things
she left behind on the
old marble library steps:
a foolish fantasy
and a spent stem of a flower.