Where My Roses Fall

—————1—————

The shouts, coupled with the swoosh of cellophane, woke Ken. He peered over. The sight? His roommates designing chocolate boxes and money bouquets for Valentine’s. The room was coloured with hues of fragrance; the boys were already drowning in the tides of romance. He sighed, brushed the creases off his mattress, and made his way to his cupboard. He remembered them—love-drunk—planning to visit the love garden and gift their Val the world. How sweet. He could also hear himself: “Wait till I become a Romeo. Soon enough!”
Love had always lived in Ken, secretly. It grew from a childhood ache to be loved and a young man’s hope to see his babe unveiled. While others chased public gestures, Ken held a different fantasy: his love, posed elegantly, a picturesque landscape unfurling behind her, captured forever in frames. He never understood the pricey charades his roommates performed. He just wanted his own love to sprout from a place of imaginations: a photograph.

—————2—————

Like Ken, Vyloria—nineteen years old—was on her way to the mall. She wanted to buy pink roses; she had lost the one she usually pinned in her braids. The roses fell like small lilac sorrows—during calls, at decors, always when she least expected. But a deeper fall was ripening in her heart. She had stopped answering her boyfriend’s calls since noon. She knew now his love was only for her reflection, not her soul. She wanted a Valentine’s romance that came from a deeper world—a love that would catch her falls gently, that would see her true nature and last. So she paced toward the unknown, her love lingering within her imagination.

—————3—————

Ken subtly picked a fallen rose.
“Does this belong to you?” he asked.
Vyloria looked as though Valentine itself had dressed her. Deep cerise clung to her like autumn, and her dreadlocks flowed slowly down her shoulders. She wore golden ornaments around her ears, a silver ring carved through her nose. Another chain lay at her hip, her cheeks rubbed with blush. She moved like someone who believed real love still endured here.
“Thank you, darling. It’s mine. Must have fallen while I was on a call.” “No problem at all,” Ken said with a smile.
“Your perfume—it’s lovely. What is it?”
“Hyacinth,” he replied cheerfully. “I’m Ken.”
“Vyloria.” She took his phone, typing her number, her eyes catching his wallpaper.
“The Love garden? This shot is stunning! You’re a photographer?” “Yes. It’s what I do,” Ken said boldly.

—————4—————

Later that night, Vyloria called for a photo shoot at the Love garden for her birthday. He didn’t hesitate. In the days that followed, Ken took his time setting up his kit, fantasizing how he would capture her in her best poses—blowing kisses into the air, gazing away from the lens, flinging her twines, even faking a few tears for effect. Lovely, he thought. Gorgeous.
But beneath the thrill was a truth: Ken really wanted Vyloria to fall in love with him. He had admired her since their meeting at the mall—the way she moved, the way her words fell, the way she stared at him when she took his phone. But he couldn’t see his worth. Worse still was the dread that thrummed in his ribs: she would never date someone like him. A broke guy who took pictures? A man who couldn’t offer wasteful gestures Vyloria might be used to?

—————5—————

Ken reached the garden in that honeyed minute when day surrenders to night. He had come earlier, although Vyloria had asked him not to. But he needed the extra time—to set up his apparatus. The Love garden in evening light was something he had photographed a thousand times, but never this way.
There she was.
A white blanket stretched across the grass like snow in summer. Candles glimmered in a loop around it. At the center nestled a vanilla cake, its red velvet icing dark as cherry. The quartz lights had begun to glint as evening settled in. This time Ken saw her first. In his hands, he held a bouquet of pink roses—the ones she had dropped, the ones he had picked. He had soaked them in hyacinth perfume. Her favorite; bearing scent that had first made her pronounce her name. Ken brought them all for Vyloria—he was now her flowerbed. Fragrant. She glimpsed. She crossed the lawn and embraced him. “Ken. You came.” “Of course.”

—————6—————

“Another!” she chanted.
She didn’t like the poses; he didn’t either.
He lifted his hands and pinned a pink rose in her hair—she assumed that was for aesthetics.
“Be yourself, Vyloria,” he said lightly.
She looked at him for a fleeting moment. Eyes glistening. Then a tear seeped out.
She wiped it with her palms, laughing at herself. She wept a little more. Then she nodded.
He lifted his camera. She began to move effortlessly. Violet glittering within her.
She chuckled at nothing, and he caught it. She let the rose fall where it truly desired.
This was the love he had always coveted. Not the loud sort. Not the expensive type. Not the kind that came in boxes wrapped in cash or bouquets jammed with money. This was the love that dwelt in photographs—quiet. Ken wanted to boast to his roommates now. She, too, found the trellis where all her roses fell, not in her boyfriend’s abs but in Ken’s sweet camera.
Later that night, he escorted her to her room. At her door, she turned to meet his eyes.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
“For making my Valentine’s fantasy come to life.”
“Thank you too,” he replied, “for being real. Yourself.”
Then she leaned forward and pecked his cheek—tender, like placing her roses properly.
“You are where my roses fall,” Vyloria purred.
“Goodnight, Ken.”
“Goodnight, Vyloria.”
—By Ngorka Donald Chukwuma. Student of the College of Medicine and Health Sciences.