leaving

The other day, I walked through the flower market on 28th street. The concrete floors were wet with spilled water, drenching the tangled carpet of wilted petals, discarded leaves and trampled stems. Flowers inhabited haphazard spaces; individual bunches of long-stemmed delphiniums encased in clear plastic straggled beside unwrapped snapdragons, their white blossoms twisting up and around strong green stems. As the boisterous staff pushed these mobile shelves from one end of the room to the other, shifting flowers and foliage across the crowded space, the narrow aisles shifted rapidly from rectangles to trapezoids, ending in cul-de-sac triangular corners. I flattened myself against a half-filled shelf of fall flowers--all maroon and gold and green leaves as a wall of packed tight-petalled roses rolled past me inches away from my face.

Later that day, I left my job. Sometimes, in the process of removing the chains from your wrists, you end up chopping off your own hands. How quickly heavy silver links fall from you then, as gravity pulls metal to concrete with a shimmering definitive clink that disappears into late afternoon traffic. Walking away, there is nothing left but the unbearable lightness of forward propulsion, the silence of an emptied tongue, and the stillness of decapitated hands.