No, not the one that just passed, where you handed Rebecca Lacks a bouquet of flowers and asked her to be your girl in front of the entire school.
I mean the Sweetheart's Day from sixth grade, where you plucked a rose from the school garden and came up to me in earnest.
I'll never quite forget how you walked towards me, dirt smeared on your cheeks and arms swinging by your sides to hand me that one single red rose. Its stem was bent and broken in at least different three places and a few petals were already falling out, but to me, it was perfect.
I told you so and you smiled sheepishly, insisting it was no big deal.
I knew how big a deal it was. You scrambled over the fences just to pick it and wound up in big trouble for getting your jeans dirtied.
When I got home that day, I carefully placed that rose in a glass vase brimming with water and sat at my desk, admiring it, all the while thinking of you.
I could envision you being sent to your room with no dessert, laying on your bed and thinking it was worth it. Because to me, despite the pain I endured the following years, it was definitely worth it.
The next day, I ran all the way to school to see you sitting alone, head down by your knees. I slipped in next to you and gushed about the rose, but all you did was grunt and turn your back on me.
I didn't find out until the following summer that your mother was diagnosed with cancer. If I had known, I could have had the strength to hold on when you pushed me away.
But I didn't. I left when you told me to go and was content with watching you from afar.
Something changed during the summer after sixth grade, though I'm not exactly sure what. When I next saw you, you had new friends, you never talked to me, and you were never home whenever I worked up the courage to ring on your doorbell.
Eventually, I stopped trying. But that never meant I didn't care.
A few years passed and it was like the old you never existed. You had a way with girls that left them weak in the knees, and I would know more than anyone. Like me, they never lasted for long.
Sometimes I wonder if things would have been different had I stuck around for you all those years ago. But I never did, so instead I'm left with a journal of notebook thoughts.
I still have your rose. It's shriveled up and black, supported by a now dried and cracked glass vase.
I never got to say thanks.
Sincerely, Blossoms.
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