I've seen a dragon fly.

Twenty-six years old, she walks with him down Lincoln Road, Miami Beach. Cameron Diaz skates by with Marmaduke, and she feels her diamond engagement ring sparkle heavy on her hand.

The night before, an evening cruise with friends was followed by the splurge of a Miami Beach hotel room and mediocre sex.  Walking down this road with the steamy sunshine and the shiny shops, amidst the beautiful people and the purebreds, is her most favorite past-time.  She drinks it in through her pores, absorbs it, and glows.

Lately, she's been thinking a lot about him.  About marriage.  About who she is and who she wants to be.  She doesn't know what to do.  She's terrified of making a mistake.

But in this moment, she allows herself to release her worries.  To enjoy this weekend she'd planned to go just the way she'd wanted, down to this morning walk down Lincoln Road.  Down to his hand in hers.

Suddenly: Sunflowers!  Five dollars a bunch.

Cash only.

She doesn't have any cash.  She turns to him as a child, eyes wide with the sight of a favorite toy trapped in a store, unable to come home without the payment of another.  "Do you have any cash?" she asks.

He will not buy them for her.  He says no, he plays it off.  "We don't need them."  I win.

They walk away from the vendor empty handed, and soon she is sitting outside a cigar shop alone.  She hates cigars.  The smell makes her sick, so she waits outside while he shops for a product that makes him unkissable and unbearable to be around.  She feels the hot brick beneath her with her hands, the sunlight on her face, her hair warming in the sun.

The thoughts she had pushed away return and swarm around her.  Her heart aches over five dollars worth of sunflowers and the smell of cigars. She thinks of Steve Martin, who wrote,  Why is it that we don't always recognize the moment when love begins, but we always know when it ends?

This is not the moment that she decides to call off her wedding.  This is not the moment when her many tortured thoughts crystallize into one painful truth.  She remains afraid, unsure, but...

This is the moment she notices the dragonflies.

They swarm around her, and they feel like magic.  Iridescent flight.   They aren't everywhere; they're just around her.  They circle and enchant her.  They distract her and entrance her.  They are free.

And when he emerges, stinking of cigars, she doesn't take his hand, and somewhere inside her she knows everything's changed.