Seaside Longing ~ vintage watercolor painting ~ gold frame tv art screensaver

This morning, a couple wandered into the flower shop. She smelled like sunscreen and saltwater. He bought her a bunch of red poppies, careless and grinning, like the world had never broken their hearts. I watched them leave, their fingers tangled, their laughter bouncing off the sea breeze.

I should’ve smiled.

Instead, I ran my fingers over the wood counter. Right where Leona carved our initials. M + L. Just deep enough to last forever. Just shallow enough to be forgotten.

Sometimes I wonder if she even remembers me. If she sees a photo of a flower shop and feels that sting in her chest. If she passes a garden full of geraniums and loses her breath for no reason at all.

She left in late August. The sea was impossibly calm that morning, a turquoise mirror stretching to forever. Her suitcase looked ridiculous, upright beside her like it had something important to say. She stood there, told me she needed more. More than this village. More than me.

And then she left.

No goodbye. No second look.

I stayed. Not because I’m brave. But because this little blue shop, this crooked terrace, these stubborn blooms—they were all I had left of us.

The bell above the flower shop door still chimes the same soft note. I left it that way. Tarnished brass, salt-sprayed and stubborn in the wind. Most tourists think it’s charming. I never tell them that Leona hung it the week she said she loved me for the first time.

The walls have faded. Sea air will do that to blue paint. But the blooms I tend, lavender, bougainvillea, white jasmine, they grow wild under my fingers, like memories I can’t forget. They grow wild for me. Wild like old grief that knows where it belongs.

Sometimes I write her letters. Fold them into tiny pieces. Hide them in books no one reads. But I write because the ache is quieter when it’s ink on paper.

In the quiet hours, I look out at the sea and send her little prayers. For health. For happiness. For her to know, somehow, that what she was chasing…

Is here all along.

With me.
In this shop.
In this life.



Forgotten Blooms by https://medium.com/@floraartstories




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