Three pressed flowers —
one a rose, and the other two
I cannot name for their present
diminished state,
three pressed flowers
mean more to me than any
currently living that might grace
my writing desk.
Suppressed, stifled and silenced,
stuck in the cogwheels of
the thing life becomes when one
stops dreaming, I stare, yet
three pressed flowers
hearken back to more hopeful days
when words on the page
sang of happier tomorrows.
I left them once,
after they had been
presented to me in a bouquet
like a child I held in my arms,
fragile as the promise
of a dream. And I forgot —
amidst the applause and the
laughter and the blinding light of day,
I forgot.
and I forgot that I forgot.
They came to me in glass and wood,
dried and dead and only three,
but more alive for the memory
and the second life bestowed
by one I love who found them there
and kept them safe for me.
Three pressed flowers
on my writing desk,
one a rose, and another two,
three pressed flowers
are all I need, my hungry,
headstrong, hopeful self,
to remind me of the time
when I once was you.