concupiscence

The lavender garden is sharp dry sticks. The half withered lilac bush hangs on like a stroke victim, small white flowers facing away from its dead side. In front, an entire clump of golden ground cover, eaten alive. The herbivores moving on to tasty nettle flowers and deep blue hostas.

The thistles are thriving. Feeding birds all winter, has afforded me this reward.

I sit under my willow’s weeping, and look to its stunted branches for emotions appropriate for the dead and dying. Are they waiting under heavy clay soil to emerge with cicadas? Will I recall my love in the arrival of their ravenous droning?

Perhaps.

All are dead, or will die from my neglect. If you want to be poetic, will die from my breakdown, my second bottom, my passions' burial, from life and hope too afraid to wake up.

But my today is not for poetry.

Today I stand in thistles. Last summer, I brushed past lavender for the perfumed caress it left on me. I regard the desiccated bed before my re-immersion in barren slumber.