Daylily blooms, the sun has given
Life for today, tomorrow she will die
I looked around and saw such livin'
But I couldn't for the life of me figure out why

I sure do miss that open highway
And the feeling life was still about to begin
I pray that time sends you back my way
Roll the window down, feel the moonlight on my skin

Please
Come back with me
Oh please
Come back with me
To where
We used to be
Oh please
Come back with me

Went on my knees to find the answer
But found the question had escaped my mind
I never did have any chance sir
Things worth searching for are things we can't find

Shaking as I speak
Hoping it won't cast me out alone
Rosey in my cheek
Hoping it won't cast me out alone

It is raining in my sea tonight
All of the drops turning to foam
I smile at the distant light
For it's my love calling me back home

Daylily's gone
Daylily's gone
Daylily's gone
Daylily's gone

She called him her cherry
because of his bright cheeks-
               and he called her his daylily
                              (she wasn't sure why,
               but she liked it)

               He was patient and protective
               and liked the way her socks never matched
                              and the way she ate muffins (upside-down)

                              She was impatient and prideful
                              but she liked the way he read (eyebrows furrowed furiously)
               and his squinting, laughing eyes.

They were always having small fights
and once she heard her pride say-
"I'll never talk to you again."
               she never thought his eyes could look so sad
               when he slowly nodded at her
she wanted to scream.

Her life continued as years passed
and she met a boy she grew to love
               but who never quite understood
               why she ate muffins the way she did.

One day, as she was packing
               preparing to move across the country
she found a dried, wilted daylily
               and she cried herself to sleep that night, hating herself
                              wondering if he ever felt the same of cherries.

...

Since the day I met you, I have been seeing colours—
Of blue tango, dahlia, bird of paradise,
Persian buttercup, daylily, even hibiscus—

...

This is the machine.

Tucked under necklaces, poppies and daffodils
calligraphic fingertip Xs
hurry across pockets.
Thursday morning job postings
markers on construction paper windows
exhausted by making parts.
Keep weddings in thunderstorms
to hide the sound of windmills in chests,
bittersweet directions to ticking clockwork.
Carbonated water can’t convince summer to stay,
musical breaths and tulip footsteps
remind me of the gears in my knees.
Always buy wallets used
daylily bank notes folded into stairwells,
the heels of my socks.
Blue collars in ochre wheelbarrows
soaking next to the white ones.

We are quiet machines.

With cogs in our wrists
battery powered bone and sinew.
Baby’s breath white in our hair,
tiny bunches piled into collar bones or concave stomachs.
You have stars in your hair
whispering in manufactured voices
to pull out your eyelashes.
Consumed by the concept of concepts
on ravine park benches,
marred with newspaper labyrinths
smelling of rolled up sleeves.
Hand held gummy bears
prompt me to check my fluid levels,
bubbly orchids in my left palm.
Sugar intakes and patterned pants
hide homemade pulses.

This is the machine.

Cross-petals of daffodils sway to the cries
Of starlings – stark shrieks and minute iridescent
Wing-beats – while the willows whistle,
Tumultuous as feathers caught in the wind.
Like the fragrant taste of rain, you tell me
About mistakes made by people in love,
How temptations of her white heron-legs
And meadowlark voice stole your attention,
Like flies drawn into the range of a bullfrog’s tongue.
Your words meet heartbeats under tremolos
Of wild grasses with olive and mauve sprouts,
Lingering beneath brewing oyster clouds.
You adorned yesterday with honeybee stings
And barbed crescendos of climbing roses,
But tomorrow brings sweet-tongued
Hummingbirds and thrumming choruses
As your soft-spoken daylily promises
Dissolve silence into adoration.

Together amid greenery and blossoms
they stand shoulder to shoulder, narrow eyed
and fixated upon bursts of golden daylily.

More than spring mingles in the mist
more than heat flows between them
mystery envelops them

There was the first time she held a clock
a miniature spring operated swiss piece
forbidden, still she opened the back

Movement, synchronized with sound, churned
tick, tick, tock, tock, steady clicks
worked the hands notch after notch

Would she let what was between them
work without her fingers, incited by catlike curiosity,
prying open the back of him

Stare at his insides, his tick, tick, tock, tock
until she sees him as a machine
turning until the spring unwinds?

last night
dreams of neatly packaged anxiety
neatly parceled into my worst fears
planted themselves, grew their roots during my sleep.

i dreamt of irreparable scarring
a face no one could love
the pity of strangers
grief painted across my face in streaks of angry red
dry skin
red like your mother's old tea kettle
crackling like newsprint on a windy day

when you feel as if you are fighting a losing battle
with your own flesh
there is only so much war to be waged
face defeat.
skin will never be her flawless porcelain
will burn as deeply as your shame.
your teeth slightly crooked
sugarfree gum packed into a hesitant casing
leaning as if trying to escape the only mouth they will ever know

in an age of daylily smiles
women sculpted by their own reassurance
will you ever see my smile beyond all that i am not?

Ever since that afternoon, artichokes,
To me, are creatures of the sea.
They’re a chosen species, daylily stars
With softened points, salt-lipped,
Afloat in olive oil, something
So Mediterranean about them,
Aqua-spirals, flat wings of green-white light,
As if their closed leaves could tie up
Landlocked clouds. Egg-shaped, heart-shaped,
Protective layers overlapping, they speak
In wet kisses, gently caressing the tongue
With a blizzard of soft flavours.
They embrace all wines, distract all meats,
Flirt with bread, politely invite dessert –
Sweetheart vegetables willing to be dressed
In bikinis or burkas, soft-centred lovables,
The most delicate of palettes seduced
By their siren song.

i’m sorry. i know i’m four days late but quit talking to me in that annoyed tone. hear me out, i got caught up with deadlines. i drove here as soon as i got them over with.

no just kidding, i can take your annoyance because i showed up late like always over your cold silence. perpetually cold. can’t  ghosts talk? or haven’t you at least learned how to drop objects, knock on walls or change the channels on tv? sometimes when the lights in the dorm’s foyer flicker i quickly think it’s your new way of saying “sup”. then i’d remember the building’s decades old. it could just be some unfixable maintenance problem or perhaps some other ghost.

i hate you for that. we used to talk about how we felt like never truly belonged in highschool. we promised to go to the same college and be dormmates and be there as we got used to our new lives. my roommate finally showed up a week ago, a month too late for freshmen week and all that orientation ****. she’s cool and plays bass in a band. i think you’d get along with her the way she’s a morning person and takes up archaeology like how you said you would.

i can no longer listen to movement’s daylily. paramore’s last hope. all time low’s therapy. pierce the veil’s hold on til may. because i just end up thinking of how i’d make you listen to them whenever you’d call because the urge was getting strong again.

all those times we talked about dying and death and planning our funerals. ****** we were so horridly morbid. i didn’t think you’d actually pull through with it-out of the two of us, you were the one wary of things unfound in your comfort zone and i was the one who took risks. but hell, now i admit my fears surrounded death or atleast intentional ones. i wish i didn’t doubt a single bit that you’d do it.

yours was almost perfect by the way. you wore that white lace dress from your favorite grandmother and the mortician gave you purple highlights. they didn’t put your playlist on because hell, no one could take the upbeatness of the guitar rifts and the drums but the five of us let it go on loop thrice after your burial, drinking on the hood of my car, toasting to our tears. the groupchat doesn’t get flooded with memes anymore. believe me, we tried so hard to have things not change because that’s what you would’ve wanted, for us to keep going even without you.
but **** that, it’s ******* to even pretend;
how do we get past this, past you?

you pierced a permanent gap in what the word platonic soulmate meant for me. i hate you. so, so much.
but i don’t. because ****, you’ve finally chosen yourself like how i always told you to after each breakup you went through with all those ****** guys but i didn’t mean it like that. i can only hope you’re happy in your heaven. we detested that but i would like to believe there’s an afterlife for you. that’s what you deserved all along. i hope it’s one with moshpits and parents who give you earnest attention and neverending halloween.

here. i brought you paper roses. i used blue vellum for this. mind to give me an a+ for effort?

i have to drive back, it’s getting dark. and yes i’ll drive safely and text you when i reach the dorm. i’ll have a spare key behind the picture frame, if you ever wanna drop by.

blood-twig dogwoods
howl at the blue moon
while hollow-eyed susans
dance on chinook winds

pale purple monkshood
death-rite prayer chants
are swallowed whole by
yellow-throat daylily laughter

the good-news sunflower
tries to misremember the
night-shaded moonflowers that
bind her gospel to the earth

morning glory intentions
are not what they seem
hearalded by down-turned
white-truth angel trumpets