Spring likes to take its time
unpacking winter flowers from dried bulbs
suddenly showered with festive rain or wanting blood
blossoming like an old wound from fresh scars
the earth erupts. Maybe it’s
not a very subtle image, but a persistent one
that makes the difference between
memory & laws—nature, of course,
Plays its own game.
Here
Maybe flowers, too, have a strange relationship with ability
I warn people stay back, I cough up blood,
so they stay away, don’t get stuck
in the mysterious muck that shrouds me like fog,
like pollen. Always clogging up the throat.
Here
Maybe when flowers bloom, all that is life.
Maybe when I bleed out, all that is me.
Kasey Roper 