February 5 - she hands me a flower

She hands me a flower.  A bunch of hydrangeas.  And she wants nothing. 

“Here you go sir.  Have a nice day!”

I walk on down the street.  She dives behind some boxes in an alleyway, giggling.  The vast, vulgar architecture of the city rises up around me, spiraling into the sky, clawing at the last fresh breaths of air in the stratosphere. 

She handed me a flower.  And she wanted nothing.

The cross-bracing of the black, toothy edifices of main street (with a small m.  It is far from the way that Fox News talks about Main Street) trap the heat of the day in the trench of the city.  Summer, how far from winter when white snow covered the streets and for a moment refused to be blackened by the grime of the metropolis.  I wipe my hand across the back of my neck to remove some of the grime and sweat of the train.  I walk on.

She handed me a flower.  And she wanted nothing.

The boy on the corner cries out about some scandal to sell a paper.  He’s lying, but he’s working the system.  Winning? Maybe.  Doing better than me at least. 

I know she’s still lying in bed, brooding.  The sheets tossed about her naked body because she’s too set in her ways to sleep without sheets even in this heat.  She’ll be thinking about how it’s my fault we don’t have air conditioning even when it was her idea to save that $50 a month on our shitty apartment.  She’ll blame me, even though it was her idea.  Damn this heat.  I slog.  It has turned the air into a liquid through which to swim.  All she does is want and want.  But that girl…

She handed me a flower.  And she wanted nothing.

I turn around.

“Girl! Little girl, come back!”

She pokes her head around the corner again, scared now.

“Why did you give me this?”

“Do you not want it?”

“Why did you give it to me?”

“You looked like you needed a friend.”

“So you gave me a flower?”

She nods.

“And you want nothing?”

She nods.

“Why?”

“You… looked like you needed a friend.”

I look at her.  She is a grimy street child, hair limp, skin blackened, eyes yellow and sad.  She seemed to peer at me through her still thick lashes.  

A friend? Yes, I need a friend.  But not the kind of friend she thinks.  I need the kind of friend that greets me fresh at the door with a cold beer and her body.  That's the kind of friend I need.  The kind of friend that also wants nothing in return.  But this child, she needs the kind of friend that will care for her and caress her and make her forget that her parents left her naked and cold and too hungry to cry.  They bequeathed to the world a stupid child without even the good sense to die.  A flower in an arid, hot, grimy city, buckled down against the beating heat of a rainless, nuclear yellow sky.

I hand it back to her.

"You cannot be my friend."