No Flowers

 

I know flowers to be funeral companions
they make poisons and venoms
and eat abandoned stone walls
I know flowers shine stronger
than the sun
                                     their eclipse means the end of
times
but I love flowers for their treachery
their fragile bodies
grace my imagination’s avenues
without their presence
my mind would be an unmarked
grave.

 

 

~from The Spring Flowers Own by Etel Adnan

Photo by Sandra Peterson Ramirez