I do not know how to reconcile love with experience.
The people of the past buried their children
Wearing wreaths of ceramic flowers,
Armored greenery stiff enough to last whatever journey
Lay ahead of the child’s thin bones,
And every petal must have been shaped with love and only love!
For what else could convince an aging back
And aching spindle-fingers
Into laboring over finery like that?
This is one of those things that makes young women want to die.
Awake, alive, poisoned with the lust of others’ eyes,
We stare at the coins resting on the tongues of mummy women:
Just enough to pull a little something from the gumball machine.
Our fingers twitch,
And we want it.
We can only want it.