Amaryllis

A flower needs to be this size to conceal the winter window, and this color, the red of a Fiat with the top down, to impress us, dull as we've grown. Months ago the gigantic onion of a bulb half above the soil stuck out its green tongue and slowly, day by day, the flower itself entered our world, closed, like hands that captured a moth, then open, as eyes open, and the amaryllis, seeing us, was somehow undiscouraged. It stands before us now as we eat our soup; you pour a little of your drinking water into its saucer, and a few crumbs of fragrant earth fall onto the tabletop.