More than Carnation

I sit here and feel more alone than I did that day you left.
Nothing holds my heart here.
Even the tender embrace of my dear world’s existence has cleft my own purpose.

If love cannot be drowned out by the screams of patience and agony,
Does it, like all things, die of natural causes?
Be there some frost-bitten brush
Playing home to the shattered lovers?

A meaninglessly anonymous token rests idly in an old water bottle
And the raggedly tapered white bloom flushes to a flirtatious shade of pink.
Oh how it mocks.
A name could no better mirror the captor that binds its defnition.
For its flesh and intention are so much like my own—
Devoured by the innocent, appreciated by the lost.

My muscles contract,
Until my every limb shakes with the anticipation of the coming storm.
A violent rise and fall of the chest, the core, the heart.
Dark and deep, a heavy burden casts a wet veil over my face.
In the dead mystery of a drought, the flood gates have opened to release a phantom sea,
Washing over everything needing to be reborn.
Cleanse me.