you were bored two sunny days last year
when you made the bouquet of flowers
and hung the crushed paper from my ceiling

what a lady-like thing they were

you strung them up like six milk teeth
hoisting the thread around the door knob
until a crick sprung up to the left of your neck

I didn’t know how to tell you this, or that

and in that moment you couldn’t feel
something in your spine thought
to pick up the sewing scissors and cut

“there’s no time to think”, you said

crescent moons of brown hair fell to rest
on the stained oak floor your mother liked
where they burrowed in the in-betweens

lost to memory, they resembled an hourglass

biased rings they fused with the wood
strategically placed so with a southerly breeze
the room filled with your seckel pears

until the moral coughed up table salt