The Red Flower Blooms

The red flower blooms, its radial symmetry and bilateral arrangement a golden spiral;

An algorithm undone in the quiet moments between trial.

The red flower blooms in highlighted shadows of the moon's borrowed light;

Shadows that do not yield nor waiver nor cease but in concealment below the sun’s height.

The red flower blooms in droplets of blood, distorting reflections of pain in an echo of tears;

Sanguine and diluted are these foreign droplets in a pool of purged memories and fears.

The red flower blooms as the gathered condensate reverses its flow; from a hollow porcelain basin to the tip of a finger;

These rivers Tigris and Euphrates, along a strait of veins, gather at the mouth where the twin flows linger.

The red flower blooms like a wound exposed to the air, desperate its cry, vulnerable, sad, lonely, demanding its price;

It shutters itself as the coldness of steel removes these impurities from the surface like ice.

The red flower blooms below shaking hands at the cusp of regret as resolve is built and breath redacted;

Moments where the loop becomes irreversible, the cost of return prohibitively expensive yet still extracted.

The red flower blooms as tears ascend cheekbones and closed eyes open to receive them back;

A journey of contours only a gentle hand could stop; but absent they are in this brief moment of elongated time blotted in black.

The red flower blooms in the echoes of shouts and in the presence of brokenness;

These obscurities returned to their hollow forms, fatigue and cracks embedded in hopelessness.

The red flower blooms with the swelling undone and the imprints, like war paint, fading into the moments before;

Reflection is lost to impulsivity as the order of type and antitype are reversed in this war.

The red flower blooms under the curling of pain, a new pain and an old pain ingredients for this fertile ground;

It distills like a spirit haunting and forgetting within this reverberating sound.

The red flower blooms as words are taken back, chairs righted, hands held, and peace restored;

Words spoken returned from the world within which they were carelessly sent; back to a clicking tongue and a heart lost in a fluttering chord.

The red flower blooms as inflated chests exhale and red faces contort;

The clinking of dinnerware in an empty room full of support.

The red flower blooms when it is given ground to grow, nurtured by people that do not deserve its glow;

The seed of the red flower is removed from its vase, long steps are retraced, and new hands interlaced.