Forget Me Not

by Julie Soto

“In mythology, Amaryllis fell in love with a—with a man who loved flowers…”

It hurts to know that there’s a tattoo I can’t look at or touch. That I can never ask which extinct flower lives on his skin.

You may think everything ends one day, but you haven’t had ‘everything’ with me.”

She snorts a laugh, and I almost say it. I almost say I love you. But I don’t know that she wants me to. I think we could be together for forty years with twenty kids, and she still wouldn’t want to hear it. So I hold her until her breathing evens out, and whisper it soundlessly, like a prayer.

“Sometimes you just count down the days, the hours, until you can be useful again,” he says. “And if it ever ends, Jackie?” He lowers his voice. “You’re still counting away. The months since. The exact days since. Like a tally of moments you’ve spent not being important to them. But don’t ever think you’ll wake up and not be in love with her.”

He clears his throat. “It’s…I just wanted you to know that you won’t fall out of love,” he says. “It’s been years, and I can still tell you the number of days since she last needed me. Since I last held her through the night.”

Maybe it doesn’t have to be this way. He said nothing had to change—it could be unsaid. But I would always know it in my heart. I would always know that he cried when I told him no. That he found a quiet hallway and wept.

“It’s…It was never about extinction. The tattoos…” He blows out his air. “They’re ones that I—that I can’t have. Ones that can’t be used in arrangements, can’t be kept in the shop.” He looks up to me. “Ones that are likely to disappear before I can love them.”