the petals, dry now, curl nervously into a fist
light glowing on the now brown reminds me of how white they were
stem becomes flower, shadow approaches its shape
bending point brittle as fish spines
the voice of the flower asks me to forget its memory
your scent lives in future lilies,
where the cut ends below the joint of leaf and stem
something seems to continue—perhaps her hand around it
or the transfer of hands
or their absence
light turns the lily skeletal, the negative of an afterimage
watering the long-dead flower—why does it look so much deader than
it was?
from below, the flower becomes a bell—dust falls from the center in collected
seconds
remembering the contrast of color and texture the memory fleshes—
again
the lily takes on the posture of a painter’s model—reclining nudely in
moonlight
to think this flower was once in a field is a falsehood but so you could say of a
dream
there is a strange resemblance of my face in the flower but who of us was not
once lonely?
the more I question your position the sooner I forget where in my room you
are