Before there was the Earth, there was God. Before Kardi Mitchell was a doctor, she was a florist.
She knew flowers then like bones now, cared for them, loved them, cried fat tears to water them. For the first few months after LaRon had left, she visited her old shop every Sunday and spent hours searching for the perfect flowers to place on his grave. Calla lilies, larkspurs, peonies; amaryllises ripe with distilled passion, unshed blood. And every Sunday they would die in the backseat of her car, shrivel up and choke out, before they even brushed the headstone. Kardi did not cry. Not then, not afterwards. She drank two glasses of water, and planned for next Sunday. Carnations.
Today she thirsts. Lets the feeling pull at her throat. Lets it yank her petals and eat her stem. She runs to him. She ignores the volcano erupting in her stomach. The vase is slippery with sweat in the palm of her hand.
When she arrives, the ex-girlfriend is already there. She's hunched over her bulbous stomach and staring down at the grave, gasping for breath, oscillating in a tiny circle. Third trimester blues. Kardi could only imagine the energy it must have taken to get here. The love that must have filled her gas tank and throttled her forward. Could hardly look at her and see it at the same time.
A boy in odd uniform stands hesitantly beside her, his hands straight at his side, staring endlessly into the grass. His lips are parted, but no words leave his mouth. When he lifts his gaze to meet Kardi, his face splits into a puzzled recognition. A misplaced familiarity. Kardi frowns on instinct, and he glances down at the bloomed rose hanging idly from his hand.
"This is it," the boy mumbles. "What I saw on the grave. Sorry if the stem is sweaty."
Kardi promptly turns away from both of them, and vomits. Liquid forces its way through her throat fast enough to threaten rupture. Her gums bleed. Her tongue sours and blanches. She coughs and heaves, hacks and chokes on herself, on the inside brought out.
They're both kind enough to leave her be. Nya does not offer to hold her hair back while she bends over her knees with her fat fingered hands. It doesn't take long for Kardi to hear her retching somewhere off to the side, her head bobbing up and down like a fish. The boy does not look at her with his two penny-like eyes, as if his gaze had the power seal up the bleeding wound of her mouth, soaking the grass like red does bandage. When she is finished, he hands her the rose, and Kardi drops it inside Hester. She wipes her mouth with her sleeve and only then realizes that she is crying, hot sanitizer tears stinging her face and burning cheeks.
She vomits again when Nya finds the strength to carry her stomach and leave. Once more when Mac kisses the fingers of his left hand and drags them across the headstone, before walking away. Kardi vomits without stopping for several hours, until her tongue tastes of metal, until her organs are churned completely, then readjusted. Until her tears turn to water and fill the vase. Until the water is absorbed by the rose. Until the rose refuses to wilt.
