Become your chosen blooms.
Seduced by an absence of scent
you buy bundles, all
for illustration, affectation,
color against light.
Still starving, drawing
up murky waters, these
petals hold their shape for weeks.
Delicate edges never drying,
never dropping, frozen in form
until your touch, and even
then they crumble so softly
without sound.
Erin Gautsche lives in West Philadelphia where she is completing her Masters degree in 20th Century Poetics, textuality, and fiction at the University of Pennsylvania. She is delighted to be the Program Coordinator at the Kelly Writers House.