Tombstone

Don’t you remember the lianas that crept
from your veins, haloing your ribcage
in bruised florets? I told you—
that the poppies mocked you
in a cacophony of whispers, roused by the stench
of a corpse with a heartbeat.
I should have warned you—
two cycles ago, when spring breathed life
into the plums for the seventeenth time.
You trembled, asking
why the winged things die to survive.
I answered in a waltz—
your limbs were—wilting.
You pledged, the stars were distant, but
Polaris was more than meets the eye.
Nightmares were dreams, too, I thought—
but raw, phantasmagoric scabs
picked by boys and peeled by girls
with baskets, skin and seeds flecking
the fields purple. I could sense—
rotting—

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