Love's Labour Lost

8:30 am. January 23rd. Hoylake Rd.
I'm walking to the bus stop in a morning haze on my way to work, tunes pumping into my ears, cigarette smoke mingling with morning mist, eyes groggy and unappreciative of the harsh white daylight.
I step off the little grass roundabout onto the coarse gravel and come across a crushed bouquet of reddish pink carnations.

As I look down at their flattened heads by my feet, my mind wanders slightly to what could have happened here the night before.
Maybe it was the 15 year old boy I see riding round on a bike, proclaiming his love to the girl down the street and being rejected. Maybe it was an apology bouquet from an unfaithful husband to his heartbroken wife. Maybe they were thrown out of a car window as it drove by carrying a couple in a heated argument after what seemed to have been a perfect romantic dinner.
Whoever they were from, whoever they were intended for, they now lay in the middle of the road, crushed by more than one car by the look of it.

I took out my camera, and snapped it. The days would go by, they would rot, or get blown away by the wind, or get picked up by the rubbish collectors. But for now, I was the only witness this early in the morning to someone's lost labour of love.

And that was a moment worth holding on to. No gesture of love should go unappreciated, even if it is by a perfect stranger at 8:30 a.m. on a chilly Wednesday morning in the middle of Hoylake Rd.