The Bystander Effect

I taste the flowers on the floor, smashed beneath your boot, and choke on their heady perfume, finding it difficult to inhale broken petals. They are a puddle of crushed velvet, soft like the stillness after you breathe away the steadiness of your spine and allow your shoulders to curl inward. You don’t let me touch the wisteria still tangled in your hair, so I watch it weep. Violet tears drift to the ground, weightless in their untethered freedom, and stain our floors. I drown as I try to swallow their gravity before their perfume fades.