Saturday, December 29, 2012

Potpourri


I found potpourri on a night stand all dried and dead and diffusively divine and I watched
dry-eyed and wide-eyed as the once-petals disintegrated into ash and
fragrant lies.
I am so much like that potpourri, but so much more like what it was before it died. In its afterlife it had a name....and so did i.
I called myself a certain thing and lived inside this person's skin but
I don't believe i was really me
until I dried up inside.
now I'm barren, now I'm dry. I've shed my skin--my borrowed skin--
and pressed it into the leaves of books along with
rose petals and honeysuckle sprigs.
Somehow between then and now I've become
an urn of born again ferns I've
metamorphosed from stone
into potpourri.