Flower Fortune- Sweetbriar: Poetry and fragrance.

He sheltered her when he could, digging into his pockets for loose change,
eating french bread and drinking carbonated water.
Sometimes they would be horrible and not eat at all,
but buy penny magazines in order to look at the bags and
cheap shirts wrapped in sticky plastic.

Oliver turns five on July 2nd.
Harry is eagerly looking forward to the date, because he has recently been searching for reasons to keep me away from my second life. He finds that parties are the best tactic; they take days to plan, days to execute, they formally keep me in a social situation, and they are a rest from his long days at the hospital. I do not mind this sudden possessiveness he has acquired, I know that it has no underlying, alternate meaning.

The party will be sparse, both because Harry and I are low on funds and because Oliver does not like big crowds. A couple of his friends from playschool will be coming, wearing little red bowties, and bearing cartoon-wrapped presents. I can already guess that Harry will sit at the kitchen table, mixing drinks for the adults and scooping mashed potatoes onto little children's plates. He will glance at me now and again, as if to make sure I am still existing, alive, molecularly put-together.

Since we've moved, nothing has changed with Edward. Sometimes I'll catch myself thinking about him, my eyes horribly guilty and dreaming. Harry will turn away from me at times like this, trying to save himself from such vulnerabilty. The funny thing is, it is not his own vulnerability he is afraid of, it is mine. Once in awhile, he'll grab my hand out of nowhere and make me swear that I will remember where I am. I can never promise: when I read to the children, we are never anymore ourselves, but each a character in our own world. I have kept on the practice of reading classics to them, even if they won't understand. They like the sounds of the words, and remember some of the greater favorites like capable, furrow, and meadow.

I visit Edward on Tuesdays, the day that Rev can help the nanny watch the children. I barge into his house without a knock, and sit on his kitchen counter, next to a window. I look out until he emerges from his room, smiling. His gruffness, his darkness, his introspectiveness shock me every time. There is a color to his eyes that mesmerizes me; makes me know that I am still a girl, a girl who has not yet found life's expereinces profound enough. He promises me with that gray, that he will help me.

Edward has taken to old English poetry. Sometimes while I'm sitting in the kitchen, waiting, I can hear him recite to himself, pushing the words from his mouth in a deep, hollow voice. The words sound oddly modern when he speaks them. Sometimes he'll come in with his poetry book, and recite to me while I drink red wine in a clean glass. Afterwards he will act like nothing intimite had happened, "How are the children today?" he'll ask and then smile because he intentionally skipped the intimite moment. This knowledge melts me.

These Tuesdays represent a time where I am no longer in a role, I no longer have responsibilities. I simply am.

Harry would not deny me that time.
He always spends his free time with the family: playing sports with the children, making them special edible treats, cleaning a room to surprise me. He buys little gifts we can afford--oven mitts, a New Yorker, dollar-store toys, shiny lip gloss that smells like cake. I feel guilty when I see his tired face, when I notice his hand to his head. To think that the two of us have never been apart, never been without children, since we were seventeen years old. I have offered to send him to his parents house for a vacation of his own to do anything he wants. His reply is, "Things will be better when I don't have to work so often. My dream is just to take a bath and sleep through a day." He never complains, or mentions that he feels neglected.

I try to let him know he is everything to me.
Every day I am just emotionally unstable enough to let him comfort me.
He feels needed when I push my face into his neck, when I lay my head on his shoulder. If I keep my distance, he wonders where my mind is. "We are perfect, you and I" he said when we were eighteen. Every night he says it before we sleep.

My world has no structure.

My eyes are bloodshot from staring out the foggy glass door.
While I waited, I hummed lullubies to myself, hoping to conjure up some image
of a prehistoric figure in my childhood.