by James Callan
The black magic hollyhocks stood as tall as a man, taller than a legal dwarf, a voyeur of 4 foot 10 peeking over his neighbor’s fence to catch a glimpse of her sunbathing, bikini unclasped to avoid unseemly tan lines. And though the flower stalks were phallic, their blooms were flouncy, feminine affairs, unabashed and indiscreetly open. They were tall, dark, and handsome, unlike the man who had planted them—Charlie—who was short, freckled, and plain. He loved flowers and guns. He was big on the 2nd Amendment, the right to bear arms. He believed in the right to bare his arms despite his lewd tattoos: topless women with skull helmets gyrating the blades of bat-wing-hilted claymores, blood oozing from their fresh kill, spelling the words “Slay Me.” He was a florist by trade, but a seasoned “bird watcher” on his own time. He observed the red-faced warbler in the low branch of an oak. Pretty head. It cast a tiny shadow on the small of his neighbor’s back, right where her trampstamp gleamed in the sunlit pool of her sweat. Some sort of cross. An X that marks the spot. A mistake of youth. A cross to bear. A cross near her bare ass. It was an ankh, an ancient Egyptian symbol meaning life. It looked vaguely like a hooded stick figure.
The black magic hollyhocks stood at an enviable height. In the afternoon, they cast shadows as long as an NBA centerman. Without the fear of law or condescension, without the fear of backlash, they wore Gothic Victorian funeral dresses and brandished their pistils in broad daylight (no stigma about it). Charlie laughed at his own flower pun jokes. He laughed too loudly, it seemed. His half-naked neighbor flipped over in a hurry, scowling as she crossed her steamed lobster arms over a pair of Cool Whip tits.
“I like your ankh,” Charlie said.
“Get fucked, creep.”
The black magic hollyhocks were two heads taller than Danny DeVito, but they only lived for two years. It’s been two years since his neighbor moved in; since then, he has tallied the times he’s seen her petals drop to the earth. Every rose has its thorn—a well-known saying that Charlie whispers in the garden at night. Among the blooms, the view through her window is at its best. The glare no longer blinds a watchful eye, and the bees have gone to bed with the setting of the sun. Unlike other flowers, hollyhocks remain open overnight, their pistils free to the air and their stamens positively erect. The cool evening is rich with floral perfume, and, shining amid the darkness, there is a beacon of white and red radiating from a single Rose.