Mr Smith had never thought about

The fake flowers on the drawers.
That beauty which makes death feel ignored,
But looks unripe in any vase
And isn’t right for wedding cars -

Their petals never sought to solve
His seven word soliloquy.
There’s no rose bed on recovery
When after all, she loves him not.

He knows it from their scrutiny,
That untimely unchapped litany
That blush of plush longevity
Adored; while he withers.

Mr Smith’s preferred were pansies,
For ‘their faces crumpled under sunlight’,
He’d shuffle stems like decks; green necks
To warm and sweeten death.

The pansies were his calendar -
Life measured against death
Kept his watches ticking;
The thirsty amber skins were pages comprised

Of how he hated plastic petals
With a pale and putrid pith,
Their purpleness was slothful
And their pulchritude a myth

Of mocking murmurs mumbling
Memories -
As insipid as the very falseness
Binding up their limbs -
Of the August day in ‘54
When the fake flowers on the drawers
Were white against her whiter brow -
As perfect then, as they are now.