Dead Flowers in Small Arms

I did want to do it with dead flowers

the pressings of leaving here—

flowers made of truths held openly in front

from a  fallow field  left to nettles,

the broken pebbles hammered by a vengeful sun.

I plucked it up, plucked the good root

of all our great hopes and best dreams  

and watched my life parch, shrivel and die in my hands

and heard her cry out

as if this left her incomplete,

clutching nightmares in her small arms.