wall flowers

alone i talk the flowers off the walls. 
they fall down one by one like children 
tumbling down staircases. our house 
had too many windows to clean. the flowers 
are all one species but various different colors.
all color goes back to yellow-- burning 
& untrue. i peel yellow out of my body 
& become a wall of plummets. i tell the flowers
each day buckles into the next.
my stream of consciousness is full of flowers--
all of them floating towards that great television
where the ocean used to be. she tells me 
i'm always waiting & it's true. there's always
another flower puckered there wanting 
to know what i am made of. i list ingredients:
flour, sugar, hail, glass, shards of canyon.
the flowers gave up their throats for beauty 
& i ask them to teach me how-- how to relinquish
that control over words & names. the water 
smells like lavendar & is getting deeper. 
where does color emerges from? i'm looking.
all the closets in my apartment 
are too full. it's sometimes hard to close the doors.
i would do anything to have a basement again.
the walls creep closer together each night
while i'm not keeping vigil. the flowers
turn to gnats--a rainbow of blur like
a living oil spill. fossil fuels know
all our secrets & that's why we have
to burn them all. the flowers too know what i mean
when i say i need to sleep. there are
only a few left--the floor scattered with 
their visages. their blinking teeth.
the bows of a thousand empty boxes.
i forgot to get you a gift for you birthday 
so you disappeared & i am sorry for that.
i lay on the floor with the carcasses
& wait for the wood to turn to water.
there's something good on TV but
we don't have cable. we just have
the haunting dark screen glowering 
over us. life is a series of entities 
watching each other for mistakes. 
i repin the flowers to the walls 
& start all over again.