From the Flash Stash VIII: Tending to the Hanging Garden

by Wayne Cresser

(originally published in The Burlesque Press Variety Show)

When I get off my back, and I will, this sizzling pitch will stay right where I found it.  I’ll go inside and seek out the laminated card that tells me I was watering a Double Pink Fuchsia, known for its beautiful, multi-colored, pendant blooms which can grow up to three inches long. I’ll find out that I should be watering it more. I should probably be taking it off its hanger and finding some shade for it when the New Mexico sun blazes.

I put it up for Jodi, whose parents back east have pots of the stuff ringing the rafters of their backyard pergola. They might have told me what it was too, but I can recall only a pink escapade and people drinking clear refreshments with buoyant olives. And a cool ocean breeze.

They had this one, the one I was tending just now, delivered to us last week, to mark the occasion of our first anniversary. There was a card addressed to us but saying to Jodi, “To remind you of home.”

I don’t blame them for the waves of tears that caused, the rocking in the night, anymore than I can blame them now, for my current position here on the burning tarmac.

Of course it was my idea to climb up on our wobbly banister, with a watering can, because I noticed the blossoms that hang like Chinese lanterns until they open like parachutes were brown instead of candy pink. And dangling by a thread.