I didn’t think of you at all today.

With my face buried in supermarket flowers,
I spent the entire evening. What would happen
if you chose never to love me?

My telephone failed to reach you so I left
the arrangement in my car under the streetlight.
It glowed there like something sealed up inside me.

I brought them into the house where I untied the ribbon
that held them together, put them into the freezer.
Hours later I wanted them for me, but by then

the petals were weak, translucent in kitchen light.
So I walked them out the back door,
threw them under the house. The next day they were

mostly rotted in mid-bloom. I split the stem of one,
ran my thumb along the wet insides. They were alive,
the irises, somehow still blue as veins.








originally appeared in DIAGRAM