Valentine's Day

Roses are red.

And white, pink and yellow. Heck, you can even get them in blue and purple now. But she didn’t really care. Red roses were her favourite, and the roses in front of her were most definitely red.
She bent down to sprinkle ice chips over her flowers, keeping them nicely chilled, as instructed.
The arrangement really was beautiful, she thought appreciatively. Five red roses were the highlight of the piece, placed in a miniature garden with little white flowers that resembled chrysanthemum and some stalks that had some strange flat and round leaves. Two of these stalks were pulled upwards, then wrapped with a length of inconspicuous green wire and pulled gently down, forming a heart. All this was placed in a heart-shaped box wrapped with a shiny pink plastic material.

The really wonderful thing about roses was the smell, she decided, as she took another whiff. It was like stepping into a florist, a rich frangrance that enveloped the senses, then gently faded to a softly-draping veil, like morning mist. She wondered if this was what it was like to step into a rose garden.

She got up from her position, suddenly craving chocolate. There was still plenty of Valentine's Day junk in the fridge.

She passed by the dining table, and her gaze alighted on a single rose stalk in a plastic mug. The stem had wilted slightly, even though she had given it plenty of water and kept it out of sunlight. The red petals had begun to blacken slightly too. The solitary rose looked forlorn and sad.
No one should have to be alone.

She fingered the soft petals, wondering if it were really possible to make a dress out of rose petals, like the faeries in Enid Blyton tales.

The roses weren’t much more than a bud really; its petals only just beginning to unfurl. Its chance to bloom had been cut down, for a stupid overrated occasion, she thought, but she couldn’t really feel anything.

She bent down to sniff it. At first, she thought it didn’t have a smell, but then there was a shy, soft kind of scent, something so fragile she was careful not to inhale too deeply in case she shattered it. It took a few seconds, and then it vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.
She straightened up, only partially conscious of the half-smile on her face. She remembered that she had read somewhere, that roses were beautiful, whether in bud, or fully-bloomed or just petals scattered around. She agreed.

People said Valentine’s day was a waste of money, that it was an overrated, stupid holiday where florists made more money than they did in three months. It was the day when it became an obligation to give flowers and chocolates, so wouldn’t it be better to have flowers any other day? And flowers withered quickly, why go gaga over them?

But I love flowers, she thought. And since Valentine’s Day is the only day of the year I get roses, why not take advantage of that and hint shamelessly? And sure, artificial roses never withered or died, but it was nothing that a flower was supposed to be; the smell, the feel of it. No matter how great technology got, it could never replicate a genuine living thing just by studying its chemical makeup.

She was about to go into her room to study, but once again, the sight of the lonely rose stalk, standing all on its own, made her pause.

She took the rose and snipped off a little of the long stem, then stuck it into her rose garden box, just below the indent of the heart.

She stepped back to admire her work. The smaller rose now towered over the rest of the flowers, no longer sad or forlorn. She could have been imagining it, but she thought it seemed to have perked up already, just a little.

No one deserves to be alone.


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Wanted to write something really profound, but obviously, it failed.

Thanks for the roses, Siaw Ee and Tiky.