hanging flowers.

my friends always hangs her flowers from
the tops of doorways. upside down so
the life from the stem
will drain into the colors of the petals.
and like a noose, the tape holds it there.

the air becomes cancer, drying its juices
slowly, though just slowly enough
to give it hope that
water could come somehow, that
my friend could see the cruelty of
slow, beautiful death and
instead place it right-side-up in warm sucrose water.
but flowers that die with promises of living again
wilt and dull and fall apart.

so when the air has finally sucked all
of the wet from each petal, the corpse hangs there still,
the smell of its ghost faint and
swimming around it.