Flamingo Lily
First, I see its beauty—then the suicide.
It sits by the bathroom window in its silvery pot:
lush green leaves, leathery red flowers,
the yellow spadix.
For more than five years
flowers and leaves have died and been born—
an endless cycle under the warm light.
It still looks the same
though the soil keeps shrinking.
That Christmas, we were on the Big Island—
the one that grows with flowing molten lava.
We had house sitters.
The woman fell in love with our cat.
They mentioned police cars next door in passing—
a burglary, I thought.
Weeks later
we learned the man next door had killed himself
on Christmas Eve.
We never knew his name.
He worked in tech, a loner—
food delivered, late-night gaming.
The house sitters left the flamingo lily
as a parting gift.
I’ve thought about tossing it many times
but then again—
what if this
is all that remains
of him?
The Bag of Popcorn
She was getting on the bus
with a gigantic bag of popcorn.
And the bus door closed
on her arm, only the bag
inside the bus, and the
popcorn flew all over.
You would tell the story
and laugh and laugh and laugh.
I no longer remember your face
telling the story and I was
never in that bus but
some wisp of light
enters my cornea, pierces
the crystalline lens
and lands in my retina,
and it rattles the rods and cones
just like the bag of popcorn,
and it then brushes against
some remote groove in my brain,
and I see and see and see
that popcorn flying like congealed snowflakes,
and I shake and shake and shake
with laughter and longing.
