Flowers

Yellow roses with babies’ breath and ferns, tied with white satin ribbons for the leading ladies. Single ones, too, for the chorus girls. Never any for the stage crew and certainly none for her, the curtain puller, the one nobody noticed. But just once, she’d like to be the one getting flowers.

“Here,” a voice interrupted, handing her a bouquet of roses. For a brief moment she thought…
“Hold these for me, will ya? I’m on next.”

She stood there, one hand on the curtain ropes, the other clutching the roses, blood drops from a thorn beading on her thumb.