Flowers

A few brief memories, as I have to write an essay... Curse university for impinging on my precious blog writing time.

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Often, he buys me flowers before he hurts me. It started from the very first time. Sometimes I play at trying to avoid him after getting them (it is, after all, always a game), but it never seems to work. I want it and I love the cool rush of fear and anticipation when the delivery man turns up, asking me to sign for them, or I arrive home to an empty house with a fresh bouquet on the dining table. It is never the same. Actually, it's a little odd that he has kept that particular tradition going; he was never really one for such simple rituals. Not one for mediocrity. But this... it has style.

It's never the same though. Never loses the rush, no matter how many times it happens. The first time it was lilies. Poetic brute that he is, they were white, right up until the moment he painted them with my blood, straight from the knife. We had only kissed before that moment.

I can't remember all of them. All the flowers. Isn't that dreadful? You would think I could at least do that. But four years of carefully pressed petals have a tendency to fade in both scent and memory.

The roses were for our anniversary. Bloody and red, they lay crushed on the bed within moments of having received them. Thorns clutching at my throat as he raped me. The irises; that time I bruised. Lazy lilac hazes across my breasts, ink pools on my thighs, blue fingerprints around my throat and fine pale lines across my cheek. Then - odd - a cabbage flower. I laughed at that, with friends in the kitchen and he was vicious in his retribution. Later, I lay alone and numb in the cage, bandages wrapped around my arm and I had never been more in love.