I love them for their lightness for
defying my forgetful winters for
lilac carpets along the driveway each April.

I love them for all the old reasons:
beauty erupting from dormancy
the summoned slide into attunement
whisper scents of sweetness.

I love the late-bloomers—
the last cherry-blossomed tree on the block
tulips slow to open
the last eruption of a wild resurrection.

I love the way they’re sort of torture,
beauty you can’t consume without killing it.
I love the way they teach me to love
the things I can’t get close enough to.

I love the dried-out gypsophila, their
crunchy cotton tips. I love the slimy
vase-bottom leaves, rose petals relaxed
open and drooling, pads of spores
matted around weeks-old stems.

I love magnolias melted into sidewalk pebbles,
drooping daffodils, festering lilies
inside mildewed urns, the fermented
tang as it all rushes down the drain.

 

 

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Lacey Jones thinks and writes about breakdown, secular aesthetics, and the meta. She is a PhD candidate in English and religious studies and an assistant editor at the Yale Review.