"free rose" by Rosalind Margulies
yesterday was funny because you were in a terrible mood but everything was beautiful. you used your ten minute break to get away from your coworkers and go for walk around the stupid little suburb that shields your stupid little office from the city that everyone pretends is more than it is. counter culture house shows food carts keep portland weird whatever whatever. you bought a vodka soda at a bar last week and it cost seventeen dollars. people keep going through your recycling bin looking for cans and bottles. when they see you coming they walk away. you can have them, i don’t care. i don’t need the bottles. i’m not being nice i really don’t need the bottles. but yesterday everything was beautiful even though you were so angry or maybe because of it. there was a neon sign in the window of a nail salon and the top part was red and it said open and the bottom part was blue and it said come in. and you stood there and looked at it for a long time. and there was a fake waterfall by the coffee shop that serves good coffee for too much money and you looked at that too. and there was a pylon sign outside a florist and it said If your name is [ ] Come in for your FREE ROSE. except there was no name in the blank part so no one got a free rose. you walk past that florist a lot and there is never a name in the blank part. you kept walking and you saw a cat staring at you from the window of a building made of white washed cinderblock and that was beautiful so you took a picture of it and then you went back and took a picture of the sign that promised a rose to nobody. you thought about how people used to get free roses. imagine that, your name is Jane or Sally or whatever and the sign says If your name is [Jane or Sally or whatever] Come in for your FREE ROSE and so you go in and you get a rose. imagine that. when you were little you would go to the revolutionary war cemetery by your house because the whole east coast is a graveyard and you would bring paper and charcoal and you would do tombstone rubbings to find out whose bones you were standing on. you want to do that with the sign that isn’t giving anyone roses anymore. you want to touch time like braille and find out who got a free rose.
Rosalind Margulies is a writer and recent college graduate currently hanging out in the PNW. She has work published or upcoming in The Chestnut Review, Hobart, Flash Fiction Magazine, and elsewhere. You can find her on Twitter @rothalind, and you can read more of her work at rosalindmargulies.com.
