I did not fear death, not really—
but I feared the garden that never withers,
the bloom that outlives its meaning,
the stem that will not bow no matter how long the wind begs.
Somewhere in me, a root forgot how to decay.
The belladonna opened her mouth and never closed it again.
No bees. No dusk. No soft, collapsing fruit.
Only the poisoned blossom holding its pose like a dancer who cannot hear the ending note.
The others fell—
petals sighing into soil,
leaves tucking themselves into brown envelopes of forgetting—
but I stayed,
a stalk trembling with nothing left to say,
no more sun to drink, no shade to crave,
just this:
this unbearable continuity.
I fear not the grave, but the droughtless field.
I fear not rot, but the failure of rot.
The stillness where decomposition was meant to sing,
but the air refused its sacred burden.
The seeds inside me are not brave enough to die.
They turn in their shells endlessly,
gnawing against germination,
spinning their green myths in a loop too tight for history.
What if I never fall?
What if the wind skips me,
and I remain the lone yew unbent by any season?
No frost for my veins to crack beneath,
no harvest moon to call me done.
The ivy is patient,
but even ivy wants a stone to sleep on.
I have no such gift.
Only this always.
Only this flowering that won't collapse.
Only this sun that never has the grace to leave.
I beg the ground to remember me.
To take me the way it takes everything good.
But the dirt,
the sacred dirt,
passes over me like a skipped psalm,
and the roots around me forget how to die in my presence.
So I bloom,
again,
again,
again—
each time less real, less warm, more artifact than flower.
A specimen in an eternal spring.
A prayer with no god left to wither for.
And the belladonna does not blink.
And the petals refuse their final gesture.
And I remain—
not immortal,
but uninvited to the end.
04/29/25
