Marry Me

I didn't see it happen. I didn't see the spectacle. I only saw the curtain of rose petals, the half-empty champagne bottle, and the banner reading Marry Me, Pansy—the chocolate-sweet echoes of a marriage proposal.

I stood, with several spectators, gently waiting to feel the aftershocks of their happiness. Over the vermilion pond rubbing the puckering ovals with my shoe tips, I waited in hopes that a voyeur could witness two people's brightest moment.

But they were gone—probably strolled back into the Sunday Farmers' Market in Oakland's Jack London Square. The right knee of his pants, moist from where he knelt in the fresh roses. Her mascara streaked downward like her umber bangs laced behind her ears. In one hand, an organic chocolate cupcake, saved for a celebration, and in the other, he held her syruped hands, sticky from tears and champagne.

But they were gone—off meeting each other for the first time as betrothed and promised. I waited with the children who tossed the fluffy rose petals in the air as if it had suddenly snowed in the East Bay. And the parents modestly joined their children in the rose-carpeted courtyard outside the Waterfront Plaza; they softly rubbed flowers between their fingertips remembering when they too said Yes.

After my dinner, I walked back through the courtyard, still hoping to catch a glimpse of Pansy. But there was only grounds keeper making piles of dead foliage. But as I walked by him, I swear I saw his wind torn lips crack upwards into a smile as he swept the roses into a dustpan.