I have taken the flowers.
Ripped them from the light,
peeled their bright faces back
like something skinned alive.
They did not scream.
They only folded—
like lungs emptied of air,
like mouths pried open
with nothing left to say.
O, love is a quiet violence.
A hand that plucks.
A hand that presses.
A weight that does not crush—
only keeps.
Here, a lilac curls,
like a severed breath.
Here, a daisy chokes on dust.
Here, a rose—veins milk-white,
mouth frozen in a paper-thin hush—
a relic of something that once burned.
And tell me, do they still remember?
The wind that kissed them last,
the trembling hands that held too tight,
or only the silence left behind?
I listen—
ear to time’s brittle ribs,
to the breath of pressed petals,
to the ruin love leaves in its wake.
And somewhere,
in the marrow of silence,
I swear I hear them—
whisper back.
P.S. My collection of pressed flowers is vast, a garden of memories pressed between pages. Each one is a moment I refused to let slip away. And every time I look back at them, I can’t help but smile—because somehow, in their delicate stillness, they are still alive.