That was the day we freed the flowers.
you said they would fly
through the crack
between night and day,
float on ancient voices,
preserved in watered silk,
hold hands with infant stars,
and trace the bulge of the horizon.
we found them glass slippers
and glowing satin wings,
they slid down early sunbeams,
and stretched their arms to touch
the moon’s waxen cheek;
they talked to eagle patriarchs,
cursed with the black necked cranes,
shuffled in and out of time,
drank rainbows through straws
of marmalade haze.
And then one day, they came back.
came back to the shackles of the
slimy green pond,
to the angst of the hump-backed frog,
back to the frozen view
of a decaying tomorrow.
we saw them, they said,
the dead, the graves, the coffins, the pyres,
from the clouds, they look so little,
like all the children had died at once,
and they were leaving,
with no beauty, no scent, no touch of silk,
to carry with them into the endless night,
they were leaving alone
with no calligraphed petals,
no satin wings,
to escape into the light;
chain our feet tight so we can persist,
we’ve come back to bear your dead.
THOUGHT PURGE 