COLEEN SHIN Petal People
We’ll eat white orchids, live forever on flowers honeysuckle and hyssop,
steal the breath of blossoms the color of crayons. It is how I make peace with myself how I will live within the hours and survive the extinction of innocence.
My beautiful child, I mail him letters written on the sheer petals of pansies in purple squid ink.
He will laugh and show his pretty girlfriend.
As they spill from the envelope, she will gather them, save them place them under her microscope to no avail, they fade, it is a hard lesson.
Every glass heart smashed at weddings under bridesmaid’s feet
belongs to a girl in curls and heat and hope. Broken, the reflection is true, their smiles tipsy, slightly crooked, knowing the best man is not and groomsmen glean
Hello toes, bare feet,
and sprint to the open bar to get a strong drink to loosen the laces on their corsets.
I’ve hope for you, we will run to the corner the sidewalk so hot, ballet is necessary long leaps to the shade under the grocer’s awning. Near the pears, the apples and persimmons we’ll wait for divine intervention, for singed light and thunder. We will long for rain and rain will come we’ll splash home through it.
Ah, to exist on flowers, Monday the blue ones and Tuesday the yellows, Wednesday’s red roses distilled into sweet pink liquor and within the purity of that inebriation, to forgive every bruise and soul-less encounter, every apathetic gaze.
I will nibble and graze on fuchsia and freesia. March winds will tilt all of this sideways. Summer will burnish our arms amber. We will spin with the leaves in ecstatic spirals.
Come winter, all may pale, become brittle. It is the way of all things grown cold and still. No corruption will befall us,
our beings full of the affluence of Spring full of lilac and mallow, dandelion and dianthus, a feast of flowers.
16
poetsandartists.com
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