My stiffening fingers found the flowers
hiding beneath the snow,
the edges of their petals sharp with ice.
My broken fingertips turned the delicate flower flesh
every imaginable variation on pink,
and I held a bouquet against my greying skin,
lost in dreams of the spring,
wandering in and out of time and space,
to walk the streets of the city
I had never learned to call home.
I recalled all the terrible dark seasons of youth,
the great evils of the world,
and when I arrived again, at the walls of the city,
I saw it with new eyes, a great harbor
afloat on the sundering sea.
It was in this city that hope had come to live.
Forcing myself from my reverie,
I steeled myself for the trek back to the new world,
a holdfast standing strong against the old.
I left the flowers behind, thinking that when spring came,
my blood would melt from the petals
and return to the welcoming earth.