The Silence of the Last Petal by Douglas Morea
Life is a future machine. I know this because I am alive, and I remember Angela.
And I can't remember Angela without remembering my future. Do I have a story to tell? She loves me, she loves me not, she loves me she loves me not, she... This is my story: heyday of mayday puberty, wolf at the door of puppy love, ravenous for petals.
The new highway going in where we lived was high alright, and the new service road would rise to that occasion. They built storm sewers first, pillars rising into thin air to where the road surface would be, after fill-in. Sixth grade Angela and I played there one Spring morning, when old apple trees, doomed by the promise of suburbs, blew their petals, boldly and helplessly dreaming of apples and not bulldozers to come. Sky that was Earth not yet formed--what majesty of arrogant foreknowledge, to lift storm drains into a blue sky. Where were we going? We danced among those pillars holding up that sky, and touched them like they had magic. It was a rain dance that loves a sunny day.
Looking up, we pretended cars yet unborn motoring over us, their drive-shafts, mufflers and treads clearly visible through the ghost-asphalt to-be. "Oh look, I exclaimed, "There's a girl on a bicycle, and I can see up her dress." "No you can't either," Angela grinned back, "she's wearing pants." And Angela said, "Let's climb one." I said No you could fall off, and she laughed, "Imagine having it on your tombstone that you died falling off a sewer?..." And I laughed too.
So that now I think of an old joke. Man falls off top of skyscraper. Halfway down another guy sticks head out of window asks, "How'd it going?" Falling man says "So far so good". Reality test: If the condor passes behind the moon you're dreaming, if it passes in front you're awake. When I picture Angela she is a dream. yet to this day when she crosses my sky she passes in front of the moon.
Here's my theory on how the universe works. Listen closely or you might miss out and be safe. Life is a future machine. It react to what will be instead of just to what has been. to be alive is to burn your time at both ends, gone and to come. That's the life test: if it reacts to the future, it's alive. It is why you check the stove twice. You see your house burning in the future, and the long arm of those flames reaches backward in time and moves your hand to move the kettle off the burner. Because you're alive, you react to the future. Like apple petals knowing that apples are coming, and autumn leaves sighing in the breath of coming Winter. It is why unloving boulders don't wince when they fall off of cliffs, but plunge headlong into their shattering doom with equanimity. It is why chickens and bees and twelve-year-olds cross roads, and why bees have honey and stingers, and why moms drive with the window down on a Spring day when it promises to get warm. It is why we believe in ghosts, and in twelve-year-olds, and in cars that have brakes and gas. It is why there is a future that isn't just tomorrow, and why the last petal on the flower has nothing to say.
In cartoons I'd always seen it done on daisies--she loves me, she loves me not, she... one clean radial petal willfully plucked after another until...
But here, among the towering storm sewers, the petals were wild and blowing loose in this profusion of loving and not loving. Where lay the hope? If not in winning then at least in finality? So maybe my theory is wrong, or not right enough. The magic wand of life could use an extra inch. The problem is not being alive enough to know the heart of that damn last petal. It stings, it stings me not, it...
We almost kissed, Even now I keep trying to remember that we did, just as I then once kept trying to expect that we would. She hits the gas, she hits the gas not... One death it is said, is a tragedy, whereas a million is a statistic. Thus perhaps the end of the world won't be so bad--after the death of one child? She hits the brake, she hits the brake not...
Had Angela lived, she'd have melted into my endless parade, and I into hers. In a year we'd have passed on the street sharing a silent and awkward smile only, we both having naturally moved on. But a stinging honeybee, on it's way to or from a flower, using somebody's mom in a car as its murder weapon, killed Angela. Now here I am, full of years and alive still--so far so good. But I don't worry much about when my own honeybee will find me. I already know that the silence of the last petal is my future.