Florilegium

Nodes of light on the table, they glowed for almost a week, daisies and asters and whatnot, sensing in the air around them noise of an alien tongue, though living still in the language of where they came from. We gathered them one by one by the side of the road, up in rockhill pastures, or down along the creek. And we brought them here to brighten habitation with news of a fresher world.

Today they are stooping stems, faces folding in on themselves. Like the eye of day closing at dusk or the stars put out by clouds, by heavy weather, they are nothing to us now but drying husks, their names.