Cherry Blossoms by Kate Jones

Cherry Blossoms 

I’m sitting in a café out on Marine Boulevard when I see the cherry blossom from the tree outside. It descends like snowflakes to blur my vision of the street. The pavement is steaming this early morning in May, and I’m already thinking about having a drink.

Cherry blossom always sets me to thinking about my wife. We got married in May; it was hard to tell the pink and white blossom from outside the chapel down on 5th and Main from the confetti the few gatherers threw at us.

The summer we met, Sheila took to wearing a red bow in her auburn hair. It clashed, but I never told her so. When she fell pregnant, we married quicker than either of us would have liked. I was already a steady drinker by then. 

She lost the baby in a steaming traffic jam, rushing to the hospital in her second trimester. Jesus, was that a messy business. By the time we reached the ER, blood had pooled around her ankles, and she wasn’t even crying any more. She just sat, silent by my side. 

I’d been stuck out at a bar, playing pool with a couple work buddies when the call came. I’d stayed to finish my game, figured she was likely overreacting. We’d had a couple runs to the hospital already that month. She was a worrier, Sheila. Turned out, that time she had something to worry about.

After that, things fell apart pretty quick. There were no real arguments, that was the funny thing. She never shouted or blamed me, nothing like that. She never said she was sorry she married me. Just a stone-cold silence, eerie as an empty house. 

Then, one day in early November, a note. She’d gone. Again, no recriminations or regrets. Just said she thought it was best if she move in with her sister for a while. It was actually quite a nice little note, as notes go. I kept it somewhere, I forget where now. I thought about pinning it to the fridge, like you do with a kid’s drawing from kindergarten. 

That makes me think: our kid would be around six months old now. His or her first spring blossom. 

This is the first day in a while I know I’ll start drinking before 9am.

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Kate Jones is a writer, among other things, based in the North of England. Her writing has appeared in various genres and publications, including: Anti-Heroin Chic, The Nottingham Review, The Real Story and Feminartsy. She blogs at writerinresidenceblog.wordpress.com 

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