Bombs, Lilies

No bombs have fallen for three days, and this evening her husband has brought home lilies. It does not matter where they have come from, these flowers, just as it does not matter where the bombs come from. The men talk about politics, about the war. They think she is stupid because she is a woman.

She does not like the smell of the lilies. They have already opened, and as she fills the vase, as she arranges the flowers so that they sit in a way which she hopes will be pleasing to her husband, she tries not to breathe. She imagines the flowers sitting on the table. She imagines how her husband will move them just a little in the vase, placing this one here, this one here. She imagines a bomb falling, and she closes her eyes.

The stamens of lilies stain. It is something she knows through experience. She does not need anyone to tell her anything. She takes one of the brown stamens between her forefinger and her thumb, presses, rubs, then blows what remains into the air. Her fingers are brown, and when she lifts them to her face, there is that smell.

Tonight, or tomorrow, or the next night or the next, she will cling to him with the noise of war above. He holds her at these times the way he used to hold her, and she tries to remember how he used to smell. It is what she loved most about him.

She can hear the men now, sitting around the table. These men who say they know where the bombs come from, and why they come. She will place the lilies in their midst.

The table is for flowers.