flowers for alexander

Chapter 1

Late September 1988

It was a rather unusually rainy day in San Francisco and the petrichor embedded in the soil followed her all the way to the heart of the park near the gilded spires of the Golden Gate Bridge. Leaves had already fallen upon the grass in a thick blanket of red and gold: barely fall, and yet the leaves were shedding off in droves; but she had very little interest in what lay around her. The low grating of the steam in the distance hummed under the pattering of the rain in a strange comfort of sorts. She had tucked one hand into her black coat pocket and all the while she carried a rainbow umbrella over her head. With a slight twirl of her umbrella came the memory of his laughter, in how the colors seemed so cartoonish and comical against the silver and pale bricks that made up the city, and right as she recalled it, she was met with a wave of melancholy.

Florence kept her eyes fixed on the slight trail in between the leaves: the best she could do was avoid the sidewalks so no one could see her tears: the trees protected her from the weather airships overhead. No more tears. She begged for no more tears, but the floodgates had opened at that point.

If there was any silver lining to walking along the leaves through the darkness, it was that no one could hear her quietly crying to herself.

Florence reached a ponderosa pine right smack dab in the middle of the grass, the sole green in a sea of fallen leaves and a gilded world: the spiked green needles on the branches protected her head from the rain. What began life as a fine mist courtesy of the bay waters escalated into a stout, heady rain to create a fine veil of steam all about the neighborhood streets before her. The most she had seen since she had lived there in the Bay Area.

The inky black sky and the blinking lights of the silent airships only made her think of his inky black hair.

His black hair, as soft and smooth as silk. The way his neck smelled. The gentle way in which he kissed. Those brown eyes which glimmered even in the darkness.

She shook her head as she thought about the two break-ups, one of the worst things that she had done as she thought about the look of absolute pain on his face and she went away with him. She was sure that she had made the right choice and she had been in this relationship for nearly two years, but the regret couldn't be more obvious to her, however.

And then she ended this one.

Too many memories as she headed into the late Eighties and the environment around her drastically changed.

But even with the advent of everything, those two boys had their fingerprints, their scent, the shape of their bodies, everything, all over San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley.

Florence lifted her head and she peered across the grass, to the coffee shop across the cobblestone street. The memory of both of those boys confessing to her over a cup of pressed coffee, especially the second one: through the rain and her tears, she could still taste him on her lips.

She turned her head and her eyes wandered over to the other end of the grass and as far as the trees extended into the night. Dìa de los Muertos was coming soon, and that cemetery would be alive with grievances. A part of her yearned to find a spot and lay down a bouquet of those golden yellow marigolds on a gravestone as a moniker of burying their love.

Florence held onto the handle of the umbrella with her left hand as if to steady herself. A thick cloud of white steam emerged from the street before her as the rain pattered across those pipes.

It felt so strange to not have her wedding band on anymore, even if it had been a whole three weeks. To think they had married up on the hill overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge and the vast bay waters: all of it for naught.