Flowers

The flowers that you gave me sleep inside my head. And when I can’t sleep I disturb each petal from it’s slumber and piece back the memory by tainted moonlight. The faded symbols I find between my grief stricken sheets astound me even now even after the curtain closed and the last light fell from your face and shattered on the ground. Secretly spotting you, pretending you were the imaginary friend who finally appeared and now everyone could see; I traced the beautifully broken edges of your smile and accepted the flowers which I kissed with my nose. Striking a starched pose, partially holding (legally enjoying) public displays of mutual affection. You befriended my life and radically grew into my world. You were the picket fence I didn’t have to mend; the man I didn’t have to carry. A hint of death plagues the brittle body of my rose, no water running through it’s veins. Yet, this decay never smelled so sweet—faint and haunting—resembling days of August and September, long before the first petal thought of falling.