An end of flower giving
by Pierrino Mascarino
He was walking slowly, breathing in an ancient memory, along Hyde Park Avenue again, a divided street, paved with red bricks, overhung with large, dark green Live Oaks’ branches.
There was a flower vendor, overflowing with bright red blooms under the shade of one of these,
”Flores, Flores,” he murmured softly in the late afternoon air.
The walking man stopped, enjoying this first sight of the passionate blood red blossoms, and took some faded money out, gave it to the vendor.
The old man resumed walking to the end of a long block, now with a large red bunch of carnations held in both thin hands.
As he came to the corner, a pair of eyes under the straw brim of a ladies hat were coming round. He involuntarily stopped to watch them approaching, their reddish brown lashes. He scarcely had time to see the rest before the head turned away, continued on and left him thinking, watching only her red hat with a trailing mass of orange hair. Green eyes she had with reddish brown eyebrows and freckles, and then she disappeared from his sight behind a tree.
He turned back, smelling his flowers, still examining, now only in his mind’s eye, this vision faded, those passing eyes reminding him of other eyes–so vivid in his persistence of vision that he did not hear foot steps.
”Sir?”
He turned around. It was the green eyes returned with enormous irises, almost too big for the face beneath. He held his breath.
A young woman now asked, “Where did you get those flowers please?”
”Flowers?” Forgetting he had them, he looked down. The flowers now redder still after the green of her eyes and in this deepening green gloaming surrounding them.
“Oh,” he said, “from a flower seller just down Hyde Park here. He turned and pointed, to where the flower vendor had lately been, and said, “well, I guess he’s gone.”
“Oh,” the woman said, “would you consider selling those?” He still had still seen no other part but her eyes.
“Here,” he said, and smiled, handing them to her.
She wore a pink, white striped dress.
“But,” she said, “you must have bought them for a reason? for yourself? For someone … .”
“Yes,” he said, “I might have needed them for someone years ago but now only for remembrance.”
The woman’s eyes stayed fixed in front of him, for another instant, showing him a soul too young to be troubled by disappointment. He nearly felt as though he were violating her modesty by looking at them they showed him so much of her soul.
“I’ll pay you for them,” she said.
“Please, no. It pleases me, that my flower-giving in this world is not completely over with. 40 years ago I would come here on Hyde Park Street to a house where my greeneyed sweetheart lived. Sometimes I bring flowers to that house where I came then, in memory of those times.”