Three Statues
There are three statues in my garden.
The first is a small, chubby cherub. He blows me a kiss as I walk by, surrounded by darling pink roses and tulips of every color. His boyish cheeks sing of the innocence that comes with first love, of long walks by the lake where we grew up and a bashful first kiss. The sun of course would eventually set on us, but I have to admit that it was nice while it lasted. Who doesn’t enjoy being loved? When I come back to the garden, I ask myself if I miss the love or the time, these nights of our lives marked by our youthful innocence. We had no idea what was coming next.
The next statue was once golden, but the paint is chipping away on this hunky, rusting hero. Almost six feet tall, he shows off his muscles, now stained with bird poop, as red and black roses surround him. In frustration, I kick the base of the statue, thinking about the man that I once deemed perfect revealing himself to be anything but. Fights on the phone ring through my ears and my hand remembers being dropped on our walks downtown. “Not to be,” I muttered, picking one of the black roses and pulling its petals. I throw the stem into a bush, but then, despite myself, I pick a red rose and clutch it to my chest. I sigh and continue walking.
The last statue is a winged tiger, carefully placed beside a collection of greenery - bushes, hedges, and leaves of all kinds. It’s a bit unorthodox, but well, so was he. I close my eyes and I remember all his outrageous behaviors - from hiding in a bush to skip class to the baby bird he saved in the school courtyard - and yet, the most outrageous of them all was that I was worthy for him to love, if only for a moment. But now my neck remembers his hand, my cheek remembers the glass, and my feet remember flying. He shouldn’t be the statue that I keep coming to visit - he never even met my mother - but yet it is here I linger, hoping that maybe the tiger will come out of the bushes and love me again.
There are three statues in my garden. A chubby cherub, a rusting “hero,” and a winged tiger. I hope one day I can knock them all down, sell them on Facebook Marketplace, and find someone to build a better garden with.
William Flejter (2006) is an author, musician, and UMass Boston Student. With poetry and prose, he captures the world as it is, then asks the question - how can it be better?