A dozen whitened lilies,
Choked in renaissance jewels,

Each cut gripping the stalks
and tugging the leather lips.

They stain like daffodils.

And though grand,
Their speckled folds ooze death itself,
Like a beggar with heightened pride.

The string of scarlet tenses
and the stalks smothered,
each head refused nourishment,

They wither.

A dozen white maidens in ivory silks
Grip the rich tissue in your tempered skull.

I hide from them in my own clinical whiteness,
A kind of peace in prayer,

For what once was a promise of decadence and excitement,
Is now a character of lavish leather lilies.

I'm sorry that I hurt you so
With my actions, words, or mind.

I am but a child
Stood in grass-stained whites.

It feels like walking under a night sky,
Only to look up and see grey,
Like the stars had sunk to the bottom of the ocean.

I feel swallowed up,
And as though I still house something,
Yet my body's but a hollow vessel.

With no lighthouse,
No storm to sweep me away,
I am merely a boat on a vast sea of tranquillity.

Though sometimes,
Silence is the most deafening noise of all.

She sits in the sweltering sun,
Bone of plenty,
Her baroque design illustrated
Lashings of lavish lilies.
Their leather lips folded,
Collapsed and retreated.

Likened to the greenery,
They brimmed with envy,
And stroked each stone wall.

Bone dry,
She drank from the dew,
A bull’s horn,
golden halo,

glass canopy.

When the little blades pierce the air,
Or when the lush green is rolled out
                like a mossy carpet,
Rich and alive,
It licks the rim of a glass house
And fizzes from a hand in celebration,
Pity the pretty bubbles die.

It runs from you like a little beast,
But grows into a pale yellow monster,
It exists and it jeers,
It retreats and it abandones.

But you hope it returns,
And you hope that it's evergreen.