So my boyfriend, because he’s a sweetheart, brought me flowers when he showed up after being gone three long months, studying in England. They lasted remarkably well this past week while he was here on spring break, but now as he boards a plane at some terminal in the SeaTac airport, and I wake up alone in this city, the wilted flowers seem doubly disheartening. I wrote a poem about them in my tired haze:

Flowers

Oh my flowers weathered!
Oh my flowers, dead?
Their yellow turned to ancient gold
Their petals curling, inward fold.

With brittle stalks that crack,
They bend their blossoms back
Toward the ground from whence they came;
Entropy’s most beautiful claim.

I wish that you had not
Upon arriving brought
Flowers; I least needed color
As you were walking through the door.

I’d rather you’d waited
Til our time was sated—
Given them now as you depart
To keep your memory in my heart.