Dead Flowers

I like dead flowers. I have one vase in my room from the hospital and two from my birthday and one from my grandma and another from a lady in my ward, along with a pile of letters that only mean something when I read them aloud.

The little prince told me there was nothing sad about empty shells, about lonely husks. He was wrong, but I can't find Asteroid B-612 to tell him so.

There's something sad about

• imaginary friends that moved to Idaho.
• old yearbooks.
• deleting phone numbers of people you no longer talk to.
• the music on iTunes you listened to in gradeschool.
• loose change.
• the packed up toys in my basement.
• reflecting.

The flowers probably find it offensive. I don't bury them and I certainly don't mark their graves. I don't even throw them away so they can be reunited with their sisters at the landfill and I do not leave them in peace. I stare at their corpses. Are they screaming at me to respect the dead? Or are they flattered I find them enchanting, even when their looks have faded? No matter how hard I strain my ears, the silence is too loud and I can't hear their voices. It's a little morbid and a little poetic and something my parents don't understand.

Throw away the deflated balloons.

Throw away the candy wrappers. 

The old post-it notes.

The reminders.

The price tags. 

The receipts. 

The regrets.

Let it go. You're getting nothing out of reciting the same poem to yourself over and over again if you aren't hearing the words. 

But I'm a record that's scratched and repeats the same three notes over and over again.

I'm a pet mouse, stuck in its cage, spinning in its wheel at night trying to find its way to Paris.

I'm trying to write a novel out of blog posts.

I'm trying to bury my heart in the clouds and my brain beneath a peach tree so I can better hear my bones.

I'm trying to boil some water in a tea pot that no longer sings.

I'm trying to kiss some toads in the process of finding my prince and I'm scared of contracting herpes from all these warts.

I tell my teachers I can't get to school on time because of the nightmares and I told Beckstrand that I don't want to come to class because we're talking about abuse.

And here we go again. "I, I, I..."

And my friend says, "You're so brave..."

But I'm still running on this treadmill headed nowhere and I'm using Monopoly money to buy my gas.

And the man at the register gave me one sad look and took it.

And I don't know what reality is anymore or if Tuesday is the 4th or 16th because I'm reliving my birthday this morning. "Congratulations. You can legally make porn."

And I'm frying something plastic because taste doesn't mean a thing to me anymore.

And I prayed to God for the first time in months because I was scared of driving home by myself and I realize again how selfish selfish selfish I am.

Because I picked the flowers knowing they would die on my desk. And I did it anyway.