The Faster I Walk The Smaller I am

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I LIKE IT WHEN I can be done with something. Like a knitted earwarmer, like winter, spring, summer, fall. Even like Epsilon’s career. I like to get things over with. But impatience has consequences. That time when Epsilon gave me an orchid for my birthday. I didn’t really want an orchid. I never got the point of flowers, they’re just going to wither and die. What I actually wanted was for Epsilon to retire.

“But I need a refuge, away from all the. ”—for a second I thought he was going to say “togetherness,” but instead he said “nakedness.” “Does that mean me?” I asked. “I’m not naming any names,” he said.

So I undressed for the orchid instead, and soon the buds began to blossom, little pink flowers were springing out everywhere. “I wish you had the same effect on me,” Epsilon said.

The directions that came with the orchid said to prune the flowers after they wilt, then they’d revive in six months. First, though, the flowers had to die. So I watched and waited and finally I couldn’t stand it any longer. Time to be done, I told myself, and then I pruned the plant down to its skinny, bare stalks.

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