After their separation, she used to joke
that they’d get back together when
- and only when - one of them
was on their deathbed.  Well, it
wasn’t quite a prophecy, but it did land
painfully close.

Almost fifteen years since they’d last met,
he caught a plane, got picked up from the airport by
a stepson, long estranged, who
brought him to the hospice.
Seeing her there, in a terminal tangle of tubes
pumping drugs into her veins and
oxygen into her riddled lungs, he said:
“But she looks exactly the same,” and
if that isn’t code for, “Yes, I’m
still in love with her,” then
I don’t know
what is.

The next day, he bought her flowers,
fretting over floral symbolism
and how his bouquet could be interpreted.
Their daughter advised,
“Just pick something pretty,” so he chose
pink roses, stargazer lilies.  Of course
she loved them.  They were
from him.  
“Do you remember,” she asked him, as leaves
fell from tall trees outside the window,
“when we were the beautiful people?”

The flowers outlived her,
if you
really want to
talk about
symbolism.