Rain stitched silver threads across the windowpane, each droplet chasing another through the rain. I traced their crooked paths with quiet eyes, until the bell above the café door did rise. You stepped inside. Your dress was rose-colored— not red, not pink, but that tender shade the sky wears five minutes before sunset's fading prayers. Dark curls clung damply to your cheeks. In your hands were three roses, their petals jeweled with rain, holding tiny worlds within each crystal stain. You laughed when I stood too fast. "Hey, I brought you some flowers." The years slipped by like rainwater down glass, too quick to hold, too sweet to last. Three roses became one small crib. Rose. We chose the name because of that afternoon, because those flowers had first taught our hearts to bloom. Every morning you tied a bow in her hair, careful fingers shaping satin with such care, the ribbon the same soft color as your dress, each loop made perfect by your tenderness. You always loved bows. Even later, when ribbons stayed untouched upon the dresser because there was less and less hair to gather, you still kept them. The rain falls again today. Tiny droplets gather on the stone before me, running through the carved letters where you used to be. I watch them race each other downward, the way they raced that café window years before. And beneath them I imagine a rose-colored dress, a faded ribbon laid gently at rest, and your hands arranging flowers one last time, somewhere untouched by age or time. "Hey, I brought you some flowers."