The Science of Loss

What if he does come back, she thought, swinging her legs back onto the chaise. She wiped her hands on a napkin that had red rose petals and little green frogs with bulging eyes on it, leftover from the party. There was something about those napkins that had caught her eye, though she typically liked things plain, matte and simple. These napkins spoke to her as though from another era. She looked at them and saw the belle époque, that period in Paris, standing in for Europe of course, where science at large was beginning to synthesize with both mother earth and
industrialization, so that nature was becoming more precise, and machines more floral. Maps of the world were expanding, species were bursting into the light of microscopic differentiation. Maps and charts were categorizing everything but with the flourish of artistic minds, they were drawings of actual things, not things represented by signs or numbers. They mimicked what people saw on their slower meanderings through life and wanted replicated, maybe to preserve the lifeblood and fragility of what was inevitably going to die. Nature was being fossilized and imprinted, it was becoming imaged, and science, conversely, was waking up. He bought the fireplace she had inside. Neo-Victorian, she thought. But it didn’t make her think of dungeons and baroque splendour, especially in this cabin setting. It was plain, but there was a gravitas there, in looking at it. Like things she needed would stay, even after they were gone.

-Tammy Stone

My satyr and me – The Flowers

It was a gorgeous spring day. The rectangular patch of dirt that my landlord had carved into our backyard was calling me to plant some flowers. After a delightful trip to Home Depot for a variety of colourful blooms, I set to work. I first arranged the flowers by type: dahlias, pansies, carnations, Susans of many varieties. But inspired by the beauty of spring, I decided to arrange them based on colour. I started with the red ones and worked my way to white. I planted each flower an inch apart so they had their own square in which to grow. It took me over 3 hours to get it perfect. When I was done, I had a mathematically accurate grid of rainbowed beauty. Lacking a camera, I closed my eyes to lock in the mental picture of my masterpiece.

But my eyes were jarred open by the distinct sound of crunching.

Norman, my satyr roommate, was eating my flowers one by one starting with the red ones.

by Steph Small-Ross

Phoenix Bird

He moved in and made himself comfortable. While he was sleeping, she polished his shoes and prepared his stuff: coffee in the travel mug, sandwiches and coke in the lunch box, his keys, glasses, phone, cigarettes, lighter, watch, pen and clean uniform – beside the bed. Then she woke him up and gave him breakfast. She did his paperwork, dealt with creditors, cut the grass, ironed, cooked, cleaned, shovelled the snow, washed the dishes, did the laundry, worked full-time and patiently waited for happiness.

He did not give her a single penny. Sometimes he bought milk and bread. More often he didn’t buy anything.

In April he was dating a stripper. In June he was romancing with another whore. During the fall he vacationed in Europe and slept there with someone else.

She found solace in drawing flowers, one per day. Instead of wailing aloud she carefully sketched every detail and persuaded herself that life was good. She believed that he could change. It took her so very long to figure out in what exhausting mess she was.

When the pain pierced her, she took her bag and walked to hospital. A couple of hours later their daughter was born, healthy and beautiful.

She put the picture of 266 tiny flowers under the pillow. Tears ran down her cheeks, washing away 266 days of her pregnant humiliating “happily ever after”. Then she calmed down, looked at her sleeping baby, wiped her eyes and smiled. After all, life was good.

by Farida Samerkhanova

Bloom

It had taken us a while to find eachother.

Days were bleeding one into the next like the petal to petal migration of pigment of dying flowers in the vase pushed into a corner of my cubicled hell. “Welcome Aboard,” they persisted, even in the hour of their doom, but a month of this mind-numbing number crunch had shown me I would be a dud, that my career would prove uninspired, fruitless, and fallow. All the while, on all sides of me, bloomed such ostentatious displays: husbands, wives, kid’s hockey teams; plaques and certificates to enume rat e year s of s e rvi c e , t o memorialize outstanding achievement. The sickly sweet stench of success wafting over the walls I tried to hide behind.

Maybe I would hate this a little less after a coffee.

Dalia had beat me to it today and said that coffee worked for her, sometimes. The only portrait in her work area was one she had painted herself (“come see it!”), its beautiful, noisy hues shouting down the muted office tones like a druggie who has wandered into a library by mistake and can’t find his way out (an impromptu simile the only creation I had to offer by way of reply, but she laughed). And she laughed at the flowers still on my desk: “they looked good the day I picked them up, at least.”

I wondered what could sprout from two seeds so ill suited to their soil. We were both young, she said, “wait and see.”

by Sukhi Fitzpatrick