from my unpublished second collection
Mid-August, and the hanging petunias are finally dead. Only the vines survive, wiry and sick, and soon they will die too, hopefully. Perhaps then it will be safe.
For a long time I brought them water from my bath, so if the neighbors called the police, I could speak into the truth machine and prove I had not broken any laws. But then someone did call, perhaps Mrs. Bressen, a patriot, who is such a nice old lady. My snapdragons opened their buds each morning for weeks afterward.
I had a café table in the southeast corner of the terrace, facing the lake, which was once as blue a cornflower, and two lemon-colored garden chairs, begonias overhead. I was lucky they let me go; in another neighborhood it might have been different. Hard times need hard measures.
My flowering lace. My red bee balm. My exuberant orange marigolds. My sprightly purple zinnias. My impatiens, my lobelia, my prim rose. My poor snapdragons, what summoned your strength each morning for one more push, one last burst of trust?
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First published in The Malahat Review
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images and text © by Alpay Ulku
