Wilt

My congratulatory flowers are starting to wilt.

Slowly. Purposefully.

My nightstand drawer is open.

It collects the fallen petals.

I'm at my desk

Taking deep breaths

And I can smell them wilting

That sweet smell

Of flowers languishing

In unchanged water.

The lilies peel back their petals slowly...

Until it looks as if they'll tear themselves apart.

It's subtly defiant...

I never knew flowers could look so angry

Spurning their human-catered connotations.

I reach out and feel their drooping limbs

and they strike me as odd -

smooth but clammy

weak but not lifeless.

They have nothing to give me

Nor I, them.

Because rebirth is a solitary experience.

It strips me down on days like this.

Where things line up to decay

Where isolation feels like such dangerous fuel for my anger.

I sort through my nightstand drawer of lonely petals

Looking for a revelation...

Suddenly I recall how sometimes

the only way we can win is to wilt.

That surviving is simultaneously living and dying.