blue irises
jonny, the new guy at work, is telling me about his wife. they’ve been married fifteen months, he says, like he’s counting a newborn’s age, each week and month and milestone blooming with promise like blue irises. fifteen months, he says, god knows how, but she still loves him, so he still loves her.
on the lock screen of his phone, two figures stand in front of a pretty little chapel, holding hands. she is golden-haired, mid-laugh, one bashful hand half-raised towards the photographer; his dark eyes are lucid as bellsong, like he is looking into a future where everything is ok in the end.
as we drive down busy streets and four-lane highways, jonny gazes out at the road ahead, tracing his fingers over his wedding ring. i wonder if he knows that he is smiling.
it’s a couple months later when i next see jonny. i think it’s been longer for him. there are blackout curtains drawn behind his eyes and bars soldered around his mouth. he tells me that he and his wife are splitting up. he doesn’t say why, so i don’t ask.
even now, he wears his wedding ring. as we traverse our usual routes and roads, he twists the band around his finger, a well-worn motion. i wonder what he would not give for the most familiar of days.
perhaps, after all the songs and stories, love isn’t a spray of new blossoms, a baby’s laugh, next year’s calendar and its empty promise of days and days and days. perhaps love is just trial and error: cream-kissed coffee in chipped mugs in the morning, the old embrace of tires against the road that leads to your front door, whatever still works after the long days and nights.
or perhaps it’s not even that. perhaps love is just something to tuck into your purse beside the packet of kleenex, a ribbon tied to your keys to help you find them in the dark, a faded memory from back when you were somebody else. perhaps love is the vanishing point that leads your eyes eventually to the horizon, wherever that may fall. i wonder if that can be enough for me.
