The Flower Press

It was the sort of thing given to little girls: sturdy and small, round edged, wooden and light. I stalked the pasture’s rough and waist-high grass for worthy specimens: the belle amid the mass, the star shaming the clouds of slighter, ordinary blooms. The asters curled inside my sweat-damp palms, as if in sleep. Crushed in the parlor’s stifling heat, I pried each shrinking petal back, and turned the screws. But flowers bear no ugly bruise, and even now fall from the brittle page, dried prettily, plucked from memory’s hush.