flower melt 

last year a funeral in the attic. 
i call my aunt who does not live
there anymore. her number is given
to someone else who therefore gets
a piece of her life. i planted flowers by the road
& they are starting to order fancy jewelry 
on amazon. i tell them, "we are trying
to not buy from there anymore."
the flowers will be ghosts soon. they have
nothing to lose. sometimes i am a flower
& sometimes i am a chainsaw. my father
visits unannounced. it is always december
in my family. the precipice of some kind
of momentous ending. i am a lineage breaker. 
i put flowers in my hair & accept
that their bells are full of bugs. 
my aunt had a cloud of hair. sometimes
she would rain. the summer i lived 
with her & her sister was full of ghosts. 
standing in the back yard when the moon
would not stop ringing. why couldn't we
keep the trees? they knew us. they yielded 
fruit for us. how could they become 
someone else's trees? the carpet full of
melting flowers. i bought a wax husband 
when i lived in the mountains. the cold ate holes
through the walls until i was barefoot in 
a field of flowers. my aunt lost her fiance 
decades before i knew her. he was driving
a shiny car when the world filled with flowers. 
loss is a potato. the root & the feast. 
my arms in the soup finally. the flowers 
are giving their last go. puckered faces.
soon the mornings will frost. my aunt will 
wander out into the yard. her trees flowers
in someone else's hair.