into the elbows
of bamboo shoots,
slithering up them. I reach
fourteen purple spotted, green orchids
-- one reached her pink purse to me
and kissed me.  I peeled at her specs
like gumdrops on my tongue and tasted
like laughing amythesyst.  Laughing like toddlers
do.  "And how do toddlers laugh?"
like they know they are dying.
"I didn't know rocks could laugh,"
she said.  Well they do.  And praise them.
They are dying longer than us.
The orchid gasped, her golden tongue,
pink tipped dipped into the slippery mud
below us: loose cement.  She buried her tongue
and dropped, from her nest, two pearl seeds
embedded into the soil imprinted with my feet --
are my feet *****?  "I think I might die too."
What a shame -- She outstretched her petals
they dried, brown, odorless, deceased
whispering this and sweet nothings to me.
She cradled and cuddled me
to her dust.  What a shame
she only thought
and never knew.