A short story about two women's differing understandings between their perceptions of one another and their reality.

1. Carnations
It’s been a busy few months at work, and I haven’t seen her in a little longer than usual, so I
almost don’t recognize Rena at first. I walk all the way around the edge of her table to make sure that it
really is her, sitting nonchalant in the slat-backed chair at our favorite table on the patio of Cleo’s Coffee
Shop. Her usually dark hair, now bleached a brilliant silver, reflects the emerging sunshine like a mirror.
She leaps up to greet me with a smile that swallows her half-moon eyes in her cheeks, and memories of
years past flood me immediately, all carefully punctuated by her infectious laugh. When she hugs me, I
hold her a little too tightly, clinging to her like a memory, lulled by the steady beat of her heart against
my chest and the smell of soap on her hair. I wanted to tell her I was sorry I hadn’t called in the last few
months, that I missed her more than I had realized, and time had seemed to stretch on and on forever. I
wanted to say that I’d been so busy, doing what, I can hardly remember now, and that life’s felt like
trying to balance on the center of a seesaw lately to the point I’d forgotten how it was supposed to
work, that it was made for two. What I say instead is, “I missed you. Happy Birthday.” I release a long
shaky breath and feel her pull away, then remember what I’m holding.
“What’s this?” she asks with a laugh, accepting my gift as I offer it.
“The lady by my building had those striped carnations you like,” I explain, hands wringing
nervously. “I realize they’re maybe a little bright…”
“Don’t be ridiculous! They’re gorgeous, thank you.”
“Yeah, of course. Happy birthday.”
Rena had taken the liberty of ordering coffee for the both of us, and when the waitress returns
with mugs we sip our drinks and watch the sun rise above the city beyond. She pushes me a blueberry

2. muffin on a ceramic plate and I suggest we split it, saying nothing of my dislike for blueberries as I sneak
scraps of my half to the sparrows hopping idly around the legs of my chair. Rena sits unaware, picking
distantly at the red-tipped petals of a flower as the birds flutter around our table, seeking our attention
with sharp chirps and violent flaps. The forlorn look in her eyes sends a pang of worry through me, and I
sit forward to speak.
“Rena?”
“Hmm?” she doesn’t look up from her flowers.
“Are you sad about something?”
Rena’s laugh is like ice being poured down my shirt. “Am I sad? What kind of a question is that?
Aren’t we all sad?”
“That’s…not really an answer.”
She sighs, shaking her head. “It’s an answer for me. I don’t know, okay? I don’t know. Maybe I’m
sad. Maybe I’m just lonely. I don’t know yet.”
A frown tugs at the corners of my mouth. All the time I’ve known Rena, she’s been a thinker.
She considers the world more deeply than people were intended to, wrapping her mind in circles while
following trails of thought like tangles of yarn. Her body exists here, but her soul exists everywhere,
roaming endlessly through the galaxies in the depths of her eyes. Even when she’s with me, animated
and laughing, I see her hover over the earth, her feet never quite touching the ground. To hear her say
she doesn’t know is odd. Perhaps all her questions have finally overwhelmed her and are starting to
outstrip her racing mind.
“We can go anywhere you’d like.” It feels lame to even say the words; they are some poor
consolation for however she’s feeling – sad, or maybe not.

3. She brightens a little. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. It’s my birthday, and you’ve bought me flowers,
and the sun is coming out, and there’s no reason for me to be feeling down.” She shakes her shoulders,
silver hair falling over her back. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” I say. She doesn’t seem to hear.
“The market sounds perfect. I need new jewelry anyway, nothing I have matches my hair
anymore.”
“Okay. But whatever you want is on me, okay? It’s your birthday and I hate to see you feeling
down.”
“It’s a date.” She smiles, and this time it reaches all the way to her eyes. It’s strange how such a
simple response can make sunbursts go off under my eyelids, how much better it is to see her smile
after knowing she’s been down. I wonder if we’re not all as sad as she says, if the true happiness of life
isn’t in finding joy for ourselves but in providing it for others. But it’s more likely that I know nothing
about it.
___________
The market is more crowded than usual, as I had expected. Clouds are rolling in over the bay
when we duck inside the glass-roofed atrium, noses red from our brisk walk and the wind coming off the
water. Inside, paper hearts hang on cords from the crisscrossed wiring of lanterns overhead, pirouetting
like dancers in the wind from passing shoppers. The flower-sellers have moved to stalls surrounding the
entrance, sporting roses of every color arranged with all varieties of red and pink blossoms. A large
painted bouquet of daisies stares us down from the first stall as soon as we enter, every other white
petal colored red, evocative of a children’s game – she loves me, she loves me not. Rena clutches her

4. carnations closer to her chest, a subtle reassurance that she prefers my gift to anything the flower-
sellers are hawking.
The market goes on for several blocks. Over the hours we stroll lazily between the stands,
dodging vendors who hover in the aisles and invite us over with offers of two-for-one specials and
Valentine’s sales. Rena stops beside a jeweler’s stand dotted with all varieties of recycled, hand-set
pieces. She delicately lifts a silver bib necklace between thumbs and forefingers and presents it
questioningly. Tiny shards of reflective glass wink out of the silver settings like a mirror in the process of
shattering. When she moves it, the glass slings lurid pinpricks of light across the room.
“It’s beautiful,” I tell her. She smiles.
“I’ve never seen anything like it before.” Rena holds the chain around her neck, thoughtful.
“Does it suit me?”
I think the necklace looks far less spectacular resting against her collarbone than it does on the
stand, but I say nothing of it. “It’s yours. My treat.”
Rena shoots me a withering look. “You already bought me flowers! You’ve more than fulfilled
your birthday quota.”
“Yeah, well, maybe I’d just like to see you smile again.”
Her face splits in a wide grin. “You’re way too good to me.”
“I know,” I agree, plucking the necklace from her hands on my way to the cashier.
At lunchtime, we agree neither of us are particularly hungry, even though I haven’t eaten all
day. Rena likes the musicians that come to play in the square by the market, so I follow her outside into
the chilly grey air, zipping up my jacket to my throat. Despite the breeze coming off the bay, we sit

5. together on a bench to watch an old man with a clarinet perform, huddled under our wool jackets like
grey sheep, or a pair of shivering storm clouds. Pigeons land then skitter away across the cobblestones,
blinking round-eyed at the strange, wounded cries of the clarinet. The man plays a mournful melody
that sounds like loneliness. Rena sniffs beside me, nose red from the wind whipping around us and eyes
red from whatever is whipping around in her head. “I’m always amazed by how much music can make
you feel,” she murmurs, pulling her knit cap back down over the tips of her ears. “He sounds so sad.”
I am starting to wonder what sadness means to Rena. I wonder at her understanding of this man
and his life and his hardships and if she’s considered them at all, or if sadness for everyone strikes her as
a copy-pasted version of her own – a dark cloud she cannot name, but which I might venture to call
loneliness. I wonder, then, which of us is sadder by her definition – her, alone in the world inside her
head, or me, alone on this bench in a square full of people.
The man with the clarinet is in his own world where we do not exist, where there is no city and
no bay and no people, only him and his instrument and nothing else. I envy that he cannot notice us,
that he is so single-minded in his devotion to his craft. I think he must be in love, but I don’t want to say
it because Rena will misunderstand and think it sweet.
I tip the man when we leave, for the song but mostly for the moment’s unexpected repose, the
calm space of the square wherein, for a brief moment, I understood everything around me and the
world sat silently on the tip of my finger.
Rena wants to take the long way home so we can walk along the water. Okay, I say, even though
I’m starting to get uncomfortably cold. She links our arms together while we walk, admiring the
stretched-out shadows of the naked trees along the path as we go. After some time spent in silence, she
breaks away and springs deftly onto a low wall lining the walkway, stepping heel-toe along its length like
a performer on a tightrope. In one hand, the bag from the jeweler’s dangles from her wrist on red silk

6. handles; in the other, her fingers clutch white-knuckled around the plastic wrapping the stems of her
flowers. I watch her walk, following along on the flat paving stones, ready to catch her if she falls. She
alights at the end of the wall and pauses, staring out at across the bay wistfully. After a moment, I join
her by the edge of the water.
The sun is almost gone by now, obscured between the bright spires of the distant bridge on the
horizon and the rapidly encroaching cloud cover. Rena isn’t looking at the sun, though – her eyes fix
upon the masts of a school of catamarans docked nearby, rigging clanking against their metal masts like
the cries of mechanical shore birds. They look strange like this, sails reefed and tied, clustered together
like conspirators with their heads down. Rena watches them intently as if trying to determine their
secret.
“Do you want a boat?” I ask her, when the silence stretches too long to be comfortable. Then
when she doesn’t answer right away, “Sadly, that’s a birthday gift I can’t afford to get you.”
“Doesn’t everyone dream of having a boat?” she asks. “You know, a way to escape everything
for a while? Like the first step of your own little adventure.”
I want to point out to her that not everybody likes the water, or that these boats weren’t made
to travel distances like that – they’re racing catamarans, probably just shipped out for pre-season
practices. But she looks so happy in her wandering eyes, the ghosts of some fantastic imagining playing
out on her face, that all I can manage is, “that sounds pretty lonely, sailing off by yourself.” Then again,
maybe things like that don’t make a difference to someone who lives, predominantly, in her own world.
I think perhaps Rena and I have different definitions of loneliness, too. I could play a game of
competition, trying meticulously to determine which of us has it worse according to our personal
dictionaries on emotion, but it’s a competition I think I would lose.

7. “I’d bring you, then. Of course.” Rena turns to me, beckons me closer. Inviting me into her
world. “Can’t you imagine it? The way we could live, drifting out there? How much we would see, all we
would learn? The world as our oyster?”
I can imagine it. With me there to listen to her musings, to heap my undivided attention upon
her, I know I would keep Rena from feeling lonely. We could take over the ocean like pirates beyond the
rules of the law-abiding land, sailing night after night over a mirror filled with stars. Both of us
contemplating the world as it pertains to her.
“Let’s head back,” I say, head aching.
By eight it’s fully dark. The cable cars are full of tourists and couples on their way home from
evenings out, so Rena and I walk the rest of the way back to her apartment. The building itself is old, the
inside in slight disrepair, but the outside was recently repainted to match the seaside aesthetic of the
rest of the block. The dark blue wooden façade sets off the white eaves and window frames, tricking
anyone who didn’t know better into thinking the building had been developed only recently. The inside
says otherwise; we take the stairs to the fourth level, me struggling to keep my footing on the steep
concrete steps, paint flaking onto our hands from the ancient railing. Inside her apartment is not much
better. The ceiling sports bloated water stains long-dried, tiny cracks running through the off-colored
paint, and the floorboards creak with age under every footfall between us. Rena has, in keeping with her
usual style, done what she can to make herself comfortable. The living room is lit not with the room’s
built-in ceiling lights, but with dozens of round-bulbed fairy lights tacked precariously overhead. There is
a couch against the wall, but I know Rena doesn’t have many visitors, so her preference for the floor
wins out - as evidenced by the excess of dupioni blankets and round pillows concentrated in the center
of the room in a haphazard, rainbow mockery of a bird’s nest. She invites me to sit and we both lie and
look up at the lights above, allowing the stiffness to fade from our bones.

8. “You ever get bummed out about Valentine’s Day?” Rena asks after a moment of silence,
soaking in the golden light amidst the tangle of throw pillows she seems to have burrowed into during
our time on the floor. “I feel like I shouldn’t since it’s my birthday and all, but it’s still hard, you know?”
“That’s what you’ve been lying here thinking about?” My fingers find the beads of my phone
charm inside my pocket, and I rub the glass between thumb and forefinger for a second, shaking my
head. “No. I don’t really worry about it.”
“Oh.” I hear her sigh beside me. “Well, what do you do? To keep from getting lonely?”
There’s a soft click as I retract my hand from my jacket pocket. I reach for her hand blindly,
startling myself when I hit the smooth skin at the inside of her wrist. I follow it with my fingers until I
reach her palm, curling her fingers closed around the charm as I place it in her hand. She peers at it in
my periphery, lifting the tiny cluster of pink beads to the light.
“Hearts?”
“Count them,” I tell her. “When you worry about being alone, count the people who love you.
Appreciate them all, whoever they are. Don’t take any kindness for granted. One person for each heart.”
Her eyes grow round as she twists the glass of a heart bead, peering through it like a
kaleidoscope. “I don’t think I have that many people. I can hardly think of any.”
“Love can mean a lot of things,” I remind her. “You don’t have to be in a relationship to be
loved.”
I can see the gears in her head turning as she considers this for a moment.
“I suppose I can count you then, huh?” she asks this teasingly, waiting for me to smile.
“Sure.”

9. She looks briefly content, smiling at the charms as she turns them in her hand. Suddenly, she
frowns. “If I have this, what about you?”
“What about me?” I ask.
She sighs. “You’re sure you don’t get sad on Valentine’s?”
“Does that Thai place around the corner deliver?” I ask by way of an answer, hauling myself to
my feet. Rena blinks owlish at me from the semi-darkness, spooling silver hair around a finger. She looks
like a wolf in the soft light painting the room, her dark eyed visage maned with grey. There are questions
trying to form in her head, but she’s not sure what they are yet.
“Yeah,” she says instead. “I’ll get you the number.”
There’s no more talk of life or love or other inconsequential things. For several hours, at least,
there is very little talk at all in favor of eating; first noodles in folded plastic takeout boxes, then the pan
of brownies I decide to make apropos of nothing, other than seeing the mix in the pantry while
searching for silverware. We eat with two forks straight out of the pan, fighting without ceremony over
corner pieces like four-pronged jousters.
By midnight the brownies are mostly gone, despite our earlier delusions of self-control. We lay
sprawled supine across the carpet with our heads together as we seek out constellations in the fairy
lights tacked to the water-stained ceiling. Rena’s hair is washed white in the dim light, a stark contrast to
the remains of the afternoon’s lipstick staining her mouth in red patches. She looks like a flower
unfolding under a thousand tiny suns, like a carnation soaking in the light.
“If these were stars,” I ask, still suspended in the surreality of it all, “what would you wish for?”
Rena blinks up at the swirling lights above her, reflected in her dark eyes a hundred times over.
“They’re not stars though, are they?”

10. “Don’t think about it so much. They are. They can be.”
She sighs, seeking deeper into the safety of her cocoon. “I’d wish not to be alone next year,” she
says. Her voice shakes, brittle. Like she’s made of glass. Like I could breathe on her and she would break.
She continues, “I’d wish for someone who loves me. I know what you said earlier, and I really
appreciated it, but I’d still be so lonely. I’d wish to spend next year with a boyfriend.”
I admire the cracks on the ceiling, wondering at how the light obscures them. Wondering how
they can hold up so much weight without breaking.
“Sofia? What would you wish for?”
I glance out the window. Clouds scoot along through the dark sky, close but not quite touching.
The world is silent except for the loudness of my own heart, reverberating in my ribcage like an empty
room. “Yeah,” I agree. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. I would wish to spend next year with someone else,
too.”