FLOWER

My mother tells me write about it.

The anxiety and I say I just or how.

How can I when I would have to say

I am all titan arum.

My body a corpse flower.

How I wake up rotten and

The feeling is a death that is alive in

This pit. Pit of me. My arm pits wet or

Pandemic petals unfolding again into

The stink of it. My inflorescence panic

A growing stalk.

It is not the fear of dying I say. I say

To my husband. How it is the fear of it

Never going away and having to live.

Live like this.

And I am running again. Running outside

Running down this street again running

Around and around and around again.

Trying to get away from it again. The

Towers still falling. Bodies flattening.

Flattening me. How this neighborhood

Is full. Full of houses or thick blacktop

Driveways that stretch. Stretching like

Tongues out of mouths. Garages full

Of tractor mowers or ladders bags of

Seed. Cars plugged into sockets and

Lawns. Lawns full of grass. Blades of

Rye and Kentucky and Fescue. Or how

Inside the houses. Beds full of sleeping

Legs. And rooms. Rooms full of lives.