Every day I bring you white tulips. It’s hard finding white tulips in the winter, though, so I make them. It’s hard to make white tulips, though, when I’m bleeding.

The narrow stairs creak beneath my weight, threatening to send me plummeting three stories, but I reach your door safely. I knock and you say ‘come in’. The door locks from the outside. I pull the tiny, tarnished skeleton key from my coat pocket and let myself into the attic. “Good evening,” I whisper to you like I don’t want to disturb you.

You’re seated by the window, your knees curled towards your chest in that tiny cramped space where you’re reading. The daylight from outside is waning, but the white skies make it seem as though it’s still terribly bright. “Hey,” you say. “Are those for me?” You nod to the three silk, white tulips that are clasped somewhat urgently between my bandaged fingers.

“Oh.” I’d nearly forgotten. For a moment, I couldn’t… I couldn’t think. You do that to me. I make my way to you, and you hold your hand to me like some delicate Prince. I take you gingerly by the fingers and help you up. You stand like you haven’t done so in a really long time. I hold you by the elbow to steady you.

“Thanks,” you say as you take the silk tulips fashioned on green wire. “They’re beautiful.” You press them softly to your pallid lips, leaving behind the artificial scent of flowers, which I’m sure you can taste. You pull your warmth away from me and walk across the room to the second window, the one farthest from the door. There, overfilling from the nook, are thousands of white tulips. Among them there are ones that are twisted and brown, long dead, but you haven’t thrown them away. My heart lifts to see these dead flowers.

You nestle in your new flowers with the avalanche, tilting your head slightly to admire them. There are three years worth of tulips there. Three years you’ve been living here in the confinements of this attic with me. Three years of my wondering why I don’t have your love yet. I know I don’t. Even though you come close to me with all the tenderness of charming me, even though you take my hand and you kiss my fingers, I know that there’s hollowness in your heart that no amount of tulips can fill.

“Did you hurt yourself on my account?” Your thumb gingerly caresses my fingertips. Your hold is both warm and cold at the same time.

“I.. It’s only a scratch.”

You laugh, and your laugh sounds like tinny music. It once was beautiful, but now it’s old and ragged and worn. I can see it in your eyes. They used to be blue like precious gems, but now they remind me remotely of slate. I want to kiss the life back into them, I want to take your hand and I want to lead you into absolute darkness where I can show you the stars and you can kiss them and restore the glow to your pale, pale skin.

You take the key from where I replaced it in my pocket and I’m powerless to stop you. I feel your hand sliding against my coat, pressed close to my hip. Then the metal is pressed against your lips and I wonder if the metal tastes like the copper of blood. “Is this it?” you ask, “is this the key to here?”

I wonder then if you’ll cross the threshold. After three years, you haven’t touched the outside world. Everyone thinks that you’re dead. Everyone thinks that I now live alone. Everyone thinks that you’ve somehow gone off some place, left your poor brother to fend for himself, and that you’ve gone and died overseas without ever writing one letter to me.

You place the key back in my hand and fold my cut up fingers over it. You kiss them again like you’re christening them, like you’re blessing me, like you’re about to send me off on some journey. “Tea,” you say.

“Jasmine?” I reluctantly pull away from you.

“That’s the one. Always.” You laugh, that still strange, tinny, music box laugh. You dismiss me with that princely hand, returning to your narrow window where you curl up again, replacing the thin book on your knees, your eyes already trained to the pages though I haven’t left.

I turn now and head for the staircase back down, locking it behind me with that final click. I feel safe knowing that you’re inside, that you’re behind that door, just one turn of this key away. I slip it back into my pocket. Its tiny weight is almost unrecognizable, but I know it all too well.