full of moxie and viscosity

The movie was by Bernardo Bertolucci. The Dreamers. We leave the theater thinking about erections and menstrual blood and revolutions. I feel Parisian, young, and the rain outside doesn’t help my delusions. The air is clean. I am warm. My skin is softer than usual, and I feel the need to spin around hugging myself in the rain, but I don’t. We walk down stone steps and turn the wrong way down a street.

“Aren’t we on 10th?” Melinda keeps walking anyway.

“Yeah, isn’t it that way?” I try to turn but she shakes her head.

As we walk by a row of trees, spiky with tiny branches, something makes me stop. Behind me. I’ve left something colorful behind me.

“Wait.”I turn and walk back two trees. There it is. A perfect, short-stemmed red rose. Perched daintily on a branch. Dangling between two small twigs. This really is a movie. The rose has a layer of beaded water on the petals. It looks fake. Is it?

Melinda follows, asks, “Where did that come from?”

“I don’t know.” I pick it up, then put it back and reach into my bag to take a picture of it. After a few shots I lift it from its nest and hold it in my hand.

I have found another red rose. This Valentine’s Day I am not going to be concerned with black silky dresses or reservations. These words are my decision.