By Any Other Name

Craving comes with the desire. Tangled as they are, it feels odd to envision them as separate, but one is concentrated in the stomach and salivary glands, and the other starts in the heart and radiates into a full-body experience. Both refuse to cease with a liter of cold water and logic. Both are a type of ache.

At breakfast I masticate damp petals into mush. Nutty daisies mingle with the gentle piquancy of lilies, peppered with sweet clouds of baby’s breath. At dinner I dine on supermarket stalks and snack on little flowers plucked from pavement cracks.

You text me a photo of the bouquet and bonbons delivered to your door, asking, The hell is this?

My bowl is empty but my stomach growls anew at the sight of juicy bright petals and crispy green leaves, freshly misted—

Excitement triggers a coughing fit. Spit spatters the tabletop. I heave petals back into the bowl. They’re warm and pink, like my cheeks at your name. Not yet scarlet.

I reply, Just thinking of you.

†

Early reports assumed the flowers bloomed from the heart and spread to other organs. Victims were found facedown in pools of bloody petals, mouths stuffed, pistils and stamens extracted from the stomach and lungs. As research progressed and fatalities decreased, we learned. Hanaueru doesn’t bloom within a body filled with casual love; it isn’t that kind. It’s consumption and starvation. We are complicit in our own destruction.

†

Your key clicks in the lock, and you enter, radiant with sweat. I wave you to my dining table, still plucking flower heads. I pop fistfuls like potato chips. Yesterday I stopped using cutlery; it’s an unnecessary step between my mouth and the flowers.

“Woah, hey, slow down.” Your favorite chair screeches. “Did you…meet someone?” Hope springs eternal. Obviously I’m eating raw flowers, but the bouquet could’ve been celebratory, or a morbid joke.

I wipe my mouth with a sleeve, and a dollop of red smears against my wrist. “No.”

You can’t bear to see the bloody spit or the decapitated stems. You can’t meet my eyes, either. I understand why—I am searching without intending to scour. A part of me has germinated and screams for a garden only you can water. It’s embarrassing.

“How long?” you ask.

You mean the flower-craving? A month, since the first vague hankering. You mean, the feeling—or, rather, the not-quite-and-beyond feeling, the state of being? I don’t know. There was an inkling, as early as the first time we spoke under a sunrise. Growing over nights spent on the same bed. Blooming when hands brushed as we swiveled on barstools.

"Don't talk with your mouth full.” You chide dab at my chin with a napkin; the same thing you said as we shared crackers on a bus ride to the planetarium. You smile at me, then frown at the napkin. Petals are plastered to the wet paper, purple and pink and red.

How to give words to the desire as I’m hounded by the craving? I try: “I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

“We're already gonna do that,” you say. “Provided you don’t die of malnutrition or, like, pesticide poisoning.”

I reach for a rose. "You know what I mean."

"No, I don't.”

Slow down, you told me. I tear the petals one at a time, alternating words in my head: Loves me, loves me not, a chant to change the impending disaster. My throat hurts. It’s getting harder to chew.

A petal slips from my grip, and falls and flits in front of you. You pinch it between thumb and index finger, wrinkles forming around your inquisitive gaze. My heart leaps as you nibble the petal’s edge. I ache at the movement of your lips. I can’t read your expression.

You swallow. Immediately your jaw spasms, your cheeks. Your throat bobs. You hack and hack and retch. The eviscerated petal splats onto the tablecloth.

“No,” you choke out, confirming, "I don't know.”

Is a rose still a rose when all its petals are gone? The last tears away on a not, tastes of ash on my tongue. I will be gracious and noble even if I’m doomed.

You bite your lip till it’s swollen. “Do you think it’ll pass?”

I pretend to consider it. “No.”

†

When you return, bald stems litter the table and dirty flower water dries on the floor and I’m sniffling, sitting in your chair. It’s wobbly from uneven legs, but you like it this way, insist it isn’t broken.

You spread a brochure in front of me. It’s cream-and-blue, soothing. I catch the words surgery, life-saving.

“No,” I say, firmly, crumpling the brochure. “I don’t want to stop loving you.”

“So you’d rather die?” Your lips curl like thorns. “How’s that supposed to make me feel?”

“Horrified, I’d imagine.” I smile weakly. “And flattered?” I would die for you — even because of you. Do you understand? I would let you kill me.

Your eyes are shining with unshed tears. I catch my breath.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I ruined everything. I made things weird.”

“Shush,” you say. “Nothing’s ruined. Sure, it’s weird, but everything’s weird these days. Even the surgery is weird.”  The brochure is wrinkled and creased at every angle; you must’ve read it many times. “See? Turns out it isn’t a removal…”

I can’t see where you’re pointing through the tears. My chest constricts, a rabbit-thump heartbeat like thunder and lightning, harder when you pull me against your own. I close my eyes and inhale the scent of your shampoo. I’ll think about it, I promise, after I stop thinking about knowing I’m dying.

†

I open my eyes, and it’s the dead of night, lights-off, but I can see. A white-framed window. A privacy curtain. You, asleep upright in an armchair, pulled close to my bed.

My head and chest itch. I’m thirsty, and hungry for real food. In other words, I don’t feel nothing. When you wake, there will be a crick in your neck, a joyful reunion, some residual awkwardness. Right now, I spot a bouquet lopsided on the bedside table, a small box of candy hearts, and a card made of pink construction paper where you—definitely you—have scribbled: Get well soon! Love you.

I touch my lips, my stomach. The scars will be the only evidence of desire, rewired or relocated. I touch my throat—it’s mostly painless, my pulse steady. I take another look at you, then at the card. With some effort, I can smile. I still have what I need.

© 2024 Brie Atienza

About the Author

Brie Atienza is a Filipino-Indonesian writer who lives in Singapore. Her short fiction has previously appeared in Constelación and Ombak. You can find her @thesharkwrites on Twitter.