On the first warm morning of spring, Tom arrives holding half-wilted tulips like a man holding a bouquet of blunt instruments. He says he’s leaving me. For Amsterdam. Not the city—he clarifies—a woman from work. Named Amsterdam.

I do not cry. I do not rage. I do not pull his sweater over his head and pummel him with my fists like we’re in a hockey fight. No. I thank him. I say, Thank you so much, Tom, and close the door behind him, as if he’s just delivered an egg and cheese on poppy.

I don’t know why he brought a gift, but it would certainly make the whole thing worse if I refused it. I place the tulips—ten of them, all pink, smug, idiotic—in a blue Mason jar that’s been in the sink since Thursday. The tulips fan their little legs like debutantes on muscle relaxants. I put the stupid, little bitches in front of the open window by my bed.

Lovely women have fresh flowers in their homes. I read that in the Martha Stewart Living I keep under my toilet plunger. Lovely women don’t get left for women with architecture for legs. I want to be lovely, but my eyelids are heavy with exhaustion and SuperMax XXL Lash Wow! Mascara. In other words, I want to be unconscious.

I unzip my skirt like I’m shedding the fiction of who I thought I was. I remove the tastefully slutty blouse and distastefully supportive bra that I had so carefully picked for what I assumed would be a surprise brunch date. It’s horrific how excited I was. I collapse in bed. Flannel sheets from Costco. Grey and bleak, and so am I. The mattress groans. The tulips, meanwhile, look thrilled to be here. I can hear birds singing outside, and I hate them for it.

In another life, I was a sparrow. I sang loudly and often and took breadcrumbs from kindly strangers. I never once opened a shared phone plan with someone who said “babe” too often.

If I was a sparrow, I would be lapping at a glass of wine or pure love or whatever it is they drink in Amsterdam. This is not something I know. I have never had the occasion to get a passport. I’m not a globe-trotting hussy. My knowledge is limited to the Wikipedia page I skimmed after wondering what would possess someone to name a baby after a place half a world away. My guess is that it was a “creative” riff off one of those glossy city-names—Brooklyn, Paris, London—meant to sound worldly and sophisticated.

I’ve seen her photos, once, back when I was still trying not to be the kind of woman who Googles. But I Googled. It was after I saw her name on Tom’s phone. My first thought was, “oh, she’s lovely.” She has a face like a milk commercial. Her voice is a high-end essential oil. She probably doesn’t even try—or worse, pretends she doesn’t.

That’s the trick, isn’t it? Lovely women pull off femininity like backflips off the high dive. I’ve been trying so hard, since before I even met Tom. I smile at strangers. I go to Pilates. I say “sure” more often than “no”. I shave my body hair so that I’m smooth and blank.  Tom liked that about me, that I was “cool.” An iceberg. 

I watch the overripe tulips as morning turns into noon into everything after. One by one their petals fall, indecent and slow. He loves me. He loves me not. The petals scatter like little, pink casualties until there’s only one flower still perfectly intact in the ragged bunch. I reach from my supine position and pluck it out of the jar. I hold it to my nose, my lips. Then I bite. It tastes like pesticides and greenery. I chew and chew and chew the flower like cud.

Tulip madness. That’s what they called it. That’s what Amsterdam was famous for—at least according to Wikipedia. I think I understand something now, even if I’m not sure what it is.

I run to the bathroom and kneel on the floor. I vomit, knees pressed to the cold tile, hands gripping the rim as if I might fall through. The petals come up last—chewed, soft and blushing, floating wreckage in the toilet bowl. He loves me not.

I wash my mouth out in the sink. My lips are blood red, and my cheeks glow feverishly. My eyes shine—not with health, but with a kind of recognition. I look like someone I haven’t seen in a while. Not lovely, the way Amsterdam must appear when she enters a room like a neatly wrapped present, but raw and unruly.

I am already so alive.

I open the window all the way and lean out. It smells like warm dirt and a strange, feverish bloom. The birds are shrieking. They do not care if they sound lovely when they open their mouths. I scream back.

Sarah Chin is a writer with a day job in politics. Her work has been published in Epiphany, HAD, SmokeLong Quarterly, Points in Case, Sine Theta Magazine, and more. She lives in Chicago, Illinois and was born in the Year of the Fire Rat, which pretty much sums her up. More of her work can be found at sarahchin.net.