My luve is like… 
Monday, December 19th, 2005
I saw something last week that I have been thinking about ever since.
I had to go to CVS on my lunchbreak. I love drugstores. They are usually small enough to make a lunch-time wander manageable, cheap enough to not have to feel guilty if you make a purchase, and anonymous enough that you don’t have to worry about a rabid clerk following you around. It was a nasty day, pouring down sleet, so I spent my entire break there, just to get some exercise. Since I was wasting time, I headed right to the clearance section, you know, just in case. There were only two items on mark-down. Comet and condoms. There they were, the nice bottle-green Comet cans, perkily upright on the top shelf, several empty shelves, and then five or six condom packages sitting forlornly on the very bottom shelf. Sorta ashamedly pushed to the back. I felt sorry for ‘em.
But that’s not what I wanted to post about.
I left the store, running between the sleet-drops, finally sliding to home behind the wheel of the Subaru. As I pulled from the lot, I happened to notice a down-around-the-grill Mazda with a leprous green paint job. Duct-taped to the windshield was a single, red rose, with the ubiquitous baby’s-breath and green paper. I had to pause for a moment to stare, it was just so unexpected and bright, on that so grey day against that sad little car. And of course I wondered about the person for whom it was intended, and if they would be happy to peel a frozen rose off of their windshield after work that night as the sleet came down, or if it would merely annoy them. And I wondered about the person who left it, did they know it was going to storm that day, was it an apology for atrocities done in a relationship, maybe a tenative tendril reaching out for a first love, or even a Dad’s gift to a tired daughter.
Then I realized I was holding up traffic, so I left.
But the image of that rose stayed with me.
