Poppies
I am small among fields of red flowers.
They look toward me and watch as time presses
its skeletal fingers into my limbs.
Yes, this is my body now: a startling
mosaic of death-colored discoloration.
Thumbprints corrode me like an oil spill,
such unglamorous stains. I am other,
not red—still alone, even among these
populous blossoms. They waver in front
of my eyes and sway like ghosts unafraid
even of death, haunting me, taunting me,
courageous though they are the picture of
transience. Life for them is set in stone
as summer (arcing upward from the spring
only to flatline in the fall), but mine
is a winter, refusing to betray
its ambiguous end. It begins to
click for me, why I am lost among them.
The agony of “other” almost brands
my throat closed—almost. You are not them,
it yells; yet with my blue-black arms outstretched
I waver too. It is I, I call out.
In graceful parentheses—it is I,
(the scared one). But for all my courage,
they cannot answer: dying keeps them on
a tight schedule, and the sun is setting
sooner and sooner now. I learn firsthand
that autumn is a study in endings
of all different shapes in sizes. Flowers,
for instance, have their brains blown out, losing
blood in scarlet succession; like soldiers,
they wear annihilation as a badge.
Mine is different—slower, protracted.
I have to wait; it does not come on cue
although these bruises are expensive too.
I pay for them just under the surface,
in currency death takes time to exchange.
Copyright © Hannah Lindley | Year Posted 2017
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