Orange Blossoms

November 2019
Amsterdam, Netherlands

The buildings of Amsterdam are like crooked teeth, sinking deep into the gums of the canal from centuries of decay. A single street lamp warms the damp cobblestones where I stood - tracing my fingers along cracked brick and mortar. As I glance down the dark ends of the alley, I roll the paper note into a small capsule before placing it inside the crevice. I button my jacket, curse under my breath, and walk away with immediate regret. This won’t change a thing, I thought - even if she finds it.

I remembered the night we met. It was springtime, and the fragrance of orange blossoms bloomed in the streets of Granada. I waited for her beside a fountain when I received a phone call. Where are you? I heard the ever replenishing pool in the background and glanced down at my basin of stagnant water. Wet, dead leaves beached on the shores of cold stone. This was not the same fountain. A few blocks apart, I found her there - smiling at my mistake. We wandered the streets wrapped in conversation. Have we met before? She stopped suddenly to pick up a fallen orange and pointed at the trash bin on the corner. An improvised game of basketball started on the sidewalk - hands stained in their perfume. And since then, the world seemed less fascinating. She had become my atlas, and the only world I wanted to explore was one where we were together.

Winter had arrived, and I had gone - back home after nearly a year. The wedged note burrowed so far that she was never able to retrieve what I wrote for her. I thought of the wasted ink, aging alone in its hollow. One day, this building’s secret will drown with it, and whatever is left will recede into the canal’s shore, like withered leaves of late autumn. I still dream of her - of the bountiful trees and their amber-colored fruit. I wander the same streets in my mind for the hundredth time, as if we are trapped in the season. But as I glance out my window, the perpetual flurry of snow breaks the spell. The oranges never had time to ripen, and neither had we.