She Only Likes Old Things

She may be young, but she only likes old things. In a recycled world, she cherishes not novelty, but the invisible sparks of meaning that dance inside, only born with time. Her necklace won its value when he clasped it round her neck- her down pillow when he pressed close to her in the cold twilight hours of spring, resting his head beside her own. One morning a bouquet of roses woke her at her door, and she thought of the tall oaks and pines she preferred stretching high into the sky outside her window. But when he delicately traced the lines of her uncovered body with a half-bloomed rose, she learned to love them, and the naked stems rose from her Coca Cola cup vase long after the last petal had fallen.

She hated his too-clean loafers that sat by her door, until the day they went walking together in the rain and had to excavate them from the splashing mud with a stick. Her car was shiny and smooth and purred with newness when she bought it, but it never felt like hers until the evening she was too tired to drive and feigned sleep as he ran his fingers through her hair, riding quietly home under the starry summer sky. The seat would slide and rise, warm and recline, but she never touched the levers and buttons again after that night, though her feet barely reached the pedals.

Summer faded as it does, and when she was hurting she kissed new lips, but the excitement crumbled quickly like the autumn leaves. The lips were soft and kind, but they tasted bittersweet, and while new hands clasped her waist, she ran her fingers gently through her own hair. In the seat of her car she cried, and that night tears shared her pillow, gone when she woke. At her door came fresh flowers, fall tulips, brilliant in hue. Knowing new shoes would soon be placed beside the door, she fit them in among the dried rose stems, but the stems stood too tall among the fragile tulips, so she threw them away, and though they lost their petals and dried in hot July, they died that day.

At dinner they had wine, an older vintage of her choice, and she listened with a polite smile as he spoke of his dreams for the future. In her fingers she caressed the cork and thought of aged trees across the sea, shorn each decade like sheep, little pieces of them spreading outward like a star, stoppering each bottle of new with a little piece of something old. He drove her car home, and she felt hollow as he slid the seat forward and tilted the mirror down. She cracked her window and closed her eyes, and his hand rested on her shoulder, twisting her hair in careless spirals around his fingers.

Late into the night she stared at the ceiling, examining the same thoughts over and over in her head, looking for something that was not there. She considered each record on her bookshelf, etched as deeply with memories as with music; the dress draped over her desk chair, the bridesmaid's dress she had disliked until she tore it dancing late into the night; the old CRT television sitting unplugged in the corner that had wound and unwound her Casablanca VHS until the day the tape had torn; and the necklace, tangled among so many other, newer necklaces: the necklace he had fumbled with clasping around her neck until they were both laughing and kissing through messy tears. The necklace she had pressed to her heart as he drove away the time they could not have known would be the last. As she drifted into sleep, she decided to allow this burgeoning love, give it a chance to grow old, as she knew this heart loved her too. She chose to live with the fear that it would always feel new.