She holds the bouquet
as though it might confess.
He had chosen it, or so the story goes —
flowers gathered into a shape that means
I saw you,
wanted something alive
to cross the distance.
She looks at the stems.
There is always another possibility.
Slop.
Flowers picked without her in mind,
lifted from a bucket by the door,
whatever was cheapest,
whatever was already dying
and could still pass for tenderness.
At last she finds a glass.
She fills it with water.
One by one, she lowers the flowers in.
They stand there,
suddenly less like a gift
than a small, trembling body
being held together.