A Cut Flower

She lived alone in Spanishtown, next door to the dealer
who woke her every morning with a fresh spoon.
She spent months tiding in a cool frenzy, then all
her fears came slurping through when the taxi driver
followed her home. Bill said move in with us and she
did the same day. She awoke to find him vacuuming,
dressed only in a pair of leopard-skin pumps and her
grandmother’s pink chiffon apron. Cut flowers, he said,
there is no civilization without them. Narcissus or iris
or tulips, but not daisies; daisies are common and not
to be suffered. Hibiscus, Chrysler roses. He spent hours
brushing her hair, rebuilding it to fit his or her mood.
On her worst nights, he tucked her in bed between him
and his lover, all naked and chaste, and she felt safer
than she had since leaving home, since she was a child
looking up at the stars, riding the high plains in the back
of her parents’ station wagon. All this he gave her,
but others do not remember him as protector: they
remember how he could turn, how he could direct all
his intensity toward an unwitting target. They remember
the feuds, the savage verbal fury. Some swear he tried
to kill them. She took Bill home to meet her parents;
her homophobe father embraced him, thanked him
for caring for his daughter. She made a slow turn,
married an illusion of stability, and moved into a pink
brick house. The Western Blot came back negative,
but Bill’s pneumonia spoke more clearly. No long
descent, no months in the hospice, he was dead in thirty
days. She visits the cemetery on his birthday, inverts
the institutional vase, takes it to the hydrant, fills it
with water. She snips the stalks at an angle to let
the glads drink freely, leaves them there, breathless.

James Harmon Clinton