Fallen Flowers

by Kurt Baumeister

Published initially in The Oddville Press Spring 2019 issue

Your dresses of pale rose and budding sunflower,
carnation, marigold, and tulip made time slow,
made me dream there was nothing wrong with the
cheap wines, Louisiana nights, streetlights, the mists
and fogs, the closing specters of war and truth and
dawn. In the evenings, I’d find you waiting as your
flower of the day, the dress an excuse for conversation,
a way to forget the waiting world. It never took long
for the words to die, for the silk to gather, flowers
fallen at our feet. And on that last night, as I left,
as you slept, I saw the flowers as they were, truth cut,
cunning symbols, coming realization that he would
return from the war he’d chosen over you, that you
would forgive him as you always had. That the
flowers meant nothing, or were, at best, lies; the
only thing we’d shared withered on the ground.