Pigeon Heart Ponderings

If you need me, I will be hiding behind pale yellow flowers. Those are the current most robust ones in my presence. To trace them by the hours is to watch their faces follow the sun; beacons to light, beckoning bees originally, & now me. But I won’t be in the garden- this time, & not for a while. I’ve been complicit in the chain of events that leads to filling the mouths of those who cut these down, batch them up, & dispense to stores, where those of us with barbells weighing our hearts down; entire albums of Ma Rainey’s basement tapes of blues-worth-of-weight weighing our hearts down; a wayward sumo wrestler on a lonely binge of midnight ice-creams worth of weight in the heart part & all the rest of the heavy heavy winds- occasionally find some reprieve. It’s been a sad, slow spring-bleeding-into-summer, with autumn starting to hang its nose over the fence. Time continues to baffle & tick forward; me- trailing, trying to get my legs under me with a forward leading, 200 pound head. Trying not to face plant. Trying not to fall, as to fall is to continue to lay, & it’s proven I’m not best at rest.
There were more pieces to me when I first started. The things I did not know earlier. The lightness that I could have entertained. I have shed skin, entire body parts, & an entire other body connected to my soul, again. 1 father later, this time. What a miss. 100+ flowers since, almost forgotten. Surrounding myself thereafter in anything that could trade its own charm for temporary happiness. I am merciless with flora; a biblical nuisance; like their life is here for my pleasure & I take, trim, assemble…
Dispersed throughout my house & across my field of vision- colorful variants that once stood in a field, serving pollinators & grateful moments of paused gaze. I take & take to plug a hole, because I am full of an emptiness of no known bottom that demands beauty to come in from outside myself, as my strength has not been sufficiently gathered to float my own. Sometimes it’s the things that didn’t volunteer to be your cheerleader that wind up holding the pompoms. If a broken heart can be cushioned with pillows of petals then I will water each morning, in mourning when I am able. If satiation exists through awaking the olfactory cortex for a spell, then I’ll take the quiet riot of color captive. Supportive substitutes, buoying well-being. I thank thee.