Oh, he always had anxiety. I’ve never met anyone that was so nervous, it’s like anytime anything in his surroundings stepped out of line he went into shock and a state of fear. He thought it meant something bigger, something worse was on the horizon. I mean when we first started dating it was great, I always thought he was real interesting. Ever since high-school.

When we first started going out, he used to drive for a living. Any night I would stay over he would get up at the ass crack of dawn to start his route. He wasn’t a trucker or nothing, he just drove livestock to the local processing plants from the farms. Chickens, pigs, cattle. Said it was the only thing he could find after he had dropped out of college, and that he liked driving a lot.

Of course, I don’t ever really remember him having any hobbies in high-school either so I guess you could say that driving around was really the only experience he had.

After we had been seeing each other for a couple of months I think the job finally started to get to him. He wasn’t someone to complain and expect you to fix anything or make him feel any better, I think he just needed someone to let out to.You know I think he probably just finally got a feel for the animals. Driving them around just knowing that they were going to the slaughterhouse, and that he was were their ticket- just horrible. So, anyway, he started complaining every time we ever got to see one another, and I could tell he was just coming back more and more high-strung. I told him he should see if there was any other driving positions that he could slot into, but he would never even look! Just told me that there wasn’t any point. He was right of course, the job market had been laying flat on its back for a couple years at that point. But it was moreso just to convince him that there was other options out there. It went on like that for months. His attitude worsening, and worsening, really we stopped seeing each other so much for a while, I just thought it would hopefully ride out. I don’t know, in hindsight, maybe I should have left at that point. He never got angry at me or nothing, he was just was sort of miserable to be around. I am glad I didn’t leave though, at that point at least. It was one day that he had gotten off of work, at the end of a particularly intense driving week, that he called me up saying that we had to meet up that night, that he had figured out what he was going to do. He sounded much more relaxed, out of his own head, which was the worst and most frequent place he spent time.

So, we met up to go on a walk around my neighborhood. It was a really sweet walk actually. The weather was balmy, and it was like there was a constant fan of cicada’s crying everywhere. All that summer actually. He had gotten us each an ice-pop. Well it was actually one, but it was one of those ones where they have two sticks coming out- so you each break off a piece- you know? Anyway, he told me that on the road, there had been a turned over truck up ahead on one of his routes. The whole of the highway had to sit at a standstill for more than four hours, parked in their cars, waiting for a crew to come flip it back over and get out of the way. It was a one way highway, so there wasn’t anywhere to turn around neither. For awhile he told me that he just watched more and more cars become fed up, and turn down on the median because there weren’t no cops around, and simply drive over to the other side of the highway. Course he said he couldn’t because he was in a semi, he would have made just another pile up. He stopped telling me about his day, as he finished his popsicle, and I remember he tossed it over some trees and tried to land it in a crick nearby. When we got to a little spot where we could sit down, he continued, after turning to me so he could watch my reaction.

After sitting in that truck for so long, he had apparently turned his gaze to one of the fields that was lining the highway and had a revelation. He said that there was a crop of field peas that was on the cusp of when they should be harvested, and that in the light wind that moved through their lanes, he saw that they had the most beautiful flowers.

I had no idea where he was going after that, for a moment, I thought that maybe he would say that he wanted to start work planting, try and find a switch out of livestock. I wasn’t so far off, but it did end up in a place stranger than I thought it would have. I just listened though, supportive as I could be. He had been so afraid lately, so strung up- bout anything and everything. He looked happy. He took my hands then, and said to me

“Why only have roses? Those beans, and okra out there got just as a pretty of a flower as any other bush. I want to sell flowers.”

I just looked back at him and smiled, and it wasn’t fake or nothing, I was just happy to see him again.

For the next couple of months that was all he was on about. He immediately had gone home that weekend and worked it out with his landlord so that he could have a little plot of dirt in the backyard he could work on. I went out with him to buy as many flowering vegetables as we could at the time, those that weren’t in peak season I mean. The benefits were supposedly endless; the plants were much cheaper than raising full grown bushes of flowers, and he said, if he was lucky to make some connections with his farmers, once he had gotten up and made proof of concept, that he may be even able to pick their spares out the field. Driving livestock at the time was still the main thing, as it was what gave him any money, but there was a real brightness to him suddenly. We started seeing each other more and more again. I was finishing up my degree in the next year and in the rush we even started talking about moving in with one another once I had finished up. It was exciting. I was excited. I figured as long as he had his flowers to look after at that point, it would be better for his mental health, you know? He was quite good too, I mean with the flowers, or veggies or whatever. It was a month or so before he got anything really good out of them, but then all of the sudden he tons of buds and blossoms to practice with. I loved going over to his place at that point! He had all these single stems in his cereal bowls sticking up while he tried to figure out what to pair them with. Tons of things you wouldn’t even knew had flowers either. Okra blooms, they look like them tropical flowers you see in Hawaii, squash blossoms, potato flowers. You ever see a squash blossom? They open and then begin to close again once the squash is coming out. They’re like these giant orange stars, but as they wither away for the fruit to grow they twist back up and look like soft dresses that hang on the ends of the squash. Stepping into the place bombarded you with sweet perfume. I always went home with flowers too.

When he finally left his driving job, it was a little bit defeating in reality. There was a single florist in downtown, who was, very popular. After back and forth between the two, it seemed liked their would be a job opportunity that would lend some direct training. The woman though, just wanted to use him to test run a new program that seemed to have some potential.

After putting away all that time as a driver for the processing plants, she just ended up putting him up as a delivery driver once a week for bouquets. I knew right then, that from the get-go there was no way he was going be making enough money. Secondly, I could see in his expression, not a sense of remorse, but sort of, this look that said, “It’s a start.” I jumped in for damage control, and told him how exciting it would be, how just soon after working and doing it well that maybe the owner would be interested in doing a test run of his ideas at the store. He perked up, but I didn’t really have a good feeling about the situation.

I was supportive as all hell, but I could tell slowly that he was getting thrown in the ringer again. It was coming up to being winter soon, and there wasn’t really anything for him to tinker with. There was just the commercial deliveries. Suddenly the energy was real frantic again. To be honest, I couldn’t really blame him, I didn’t really have any anxiety problems and I was getting stressed out. I was happy to be in school, despite however much work that was. The economy had sunk into the toilet slowly over the summer and fall, but more than that his Momma was on and off sick. It just wasn’t a good time. The delivery job was actually going quite well, and he was incredibly efficient. There was a decent bump in income, but it didn’t really settle things out all in all. Especially because who the hell buys flowers when there ain’t no jobs. We never really talked about any of it, I didn’t know how to, but he cried a lot, whenever he called his Momma.

Nevertheless, he kept on keeping on with all the flower stuff. There was much less to work with in the winter, but he managed on with a few things he could make work during the cold, and it never really got that cold anyway. In the apartment, the television was on all the time, and the cereal bowls all had sad looking stems that were wilted and flowers dead. There was a lot of holly, which was kind the main thing that he was toying with even if it wasn’t a crop, but it was better than nothing.

It happened all of the sudden though, sometimes I think back and I don’t really know why entirely, but other times it seems obvious. The winter was really rough, but we spent a lot of time together, and I pushed him to focus on other things. Partly we spent so much time together because he almost refused to leave the house. Either way it should have ended up being fine! As spring came around, which it comes around early down here, the position on the news started to look up, and his Momma had gotten over what turned out to be a mass of kidney stones. But, he didn’t really get much better. I mean, he was still working his job, and he started planting in the early spring again, but he just stopped talking. He expanded out his little back yard square and I just came over and watched. I had done the majority of the talking for the last four or so months, so I thought maybe it was just a thing of I needed to lay off a bit, you know, like maybe he needed less pushing, but nothing really ever came out. He stopped asking me about school, which you know was coming to an end, while I was busting ass trying to finish my thesis texts to turn in. I actually thought about writing about him, I mean not him him, just a character based off him. I don’t know why, maybe I thought it would make him interested in me again. He was just only interested in the flowers though.

He’s moved back home now, yep. Lives with his parents. There was a fire down at the processing plant he used to deliver to, and it just clean did him in. I don’t ever remember him talking about any friends from the place or nothing, but I think he saw himself in the fire. He was a little too fragile for the world. We broke up before that happened so I can’t tell you really how he reacted, I am just guessing. No, I just never really got through to him again. He just went to work, once a week and came home and looked after his flowers. Squash blossoms, peas, watermelon, apple blossoms. I told you he was really good, I will give him that. I mean of course, how could you not be when that is the only thing you ever do. It was just that the world suddenly started revolving around him, around his stress, his life. I was getting my ass kicked for a couple of months before I graduated, and I never really got much of anything out of him. All of the care and effort I poured in, I ended up feeling I was alone, even at my graduation.

I am not sure if he got fired or quit, but I do know he left the florist. Maybe it was because he went back home. I just used to have this neighbor that always got deliveries, and well he just stopped showing up one day.

The last time I saw him was because I was in his parent’s area for a job interview. I was the one who initiated it, I just needed to see if he had relaxed at all. Since there was about a half a year’s time since he left. We were on amicable enough terms any way and the breakup didn’t go badly. He was very understanding, there was just no effort to fight and get me back. So, that sealed the deal. There was a minute when we were dating that I had this paranoid thought maybe he was cheating on me with the florist, but deep down I never believed it really and I think after visiting him that disappeared from my thoughts.

When I got to the house, he didn’t greet me. I had seen him through the fence working on something in the backyard, so I just went on back. There was a cereal bowl on the back porch that had a tiny watermelon in it with small splotches of white and yellow on it. When he saw me looking, he told me it was called and moon and stars watermelon. I thought that it was a real pretty name. He didn’t continue to speak after that, so I just sort of stood and watched. I did what I did less than a year ago. He seemed alright, but like I said, he didn’t even really talk to me still. It was odd, and so I left after a bit. As I went though, he said he was trying to make his corn stalks grow flowers. That was even more odd, and finally wanting to leave for good I told him I didn’t think they could.