Cut Lilies

More than a hundred dollars of them. It was pure folly. I had to find more glass things to stuff them in. Now a white and purple cloud is breathing in each corner of the room I love. Now a mass of flowers spills down my dining table— each fresh-faced, extending delicate leaves into the crush. Didn't I watch children shuffle strictly in line, cradle candles that dribbled hot white on their fingers, chanting Latin—just to fashion Sevilla's Easter? Wasn't I sad? Didn't I use to go mucking through streambeds with the skunk cabbage raising bursting violet spears?—Look, the afternoon dies as night begins in the heart of the lilies and smokes up their fluted throats until it fills the room and my lights have to be not switched on. And in close darkness the aroma grows so sweet, so strong, that it could slice me open. It does. I know I'm not the only one whose life is a conditional clause hanging from something to do with spring and one tall room and the tremble of my phone. I'm not the only one that love makes feel like a dozen flapping bedsheets being ripped to prayer flags by the wind. When I stand in full sun I feel I have been falling headfirst for decades. God, I am so transparent. So light.