Peony
- 1. Ants
- A peony open like a fist
- after the fight, filled with ants.
- Tiny ants who hunger, too, for sweetness.
- Blossom the size of a small doll’s head
- heavy with memories of growing.
- Ants like black hair in her mouth
- moving and coiling and tangling.
- Why do ants come, always,
- into the mouth of the peony?
- They eat the nectar
- that sits on her tongue.
- 2. The Teaching
- The cut peony in the little vase
- was teaching me how to die.
- It held tight to its petals even when my mother
- dipped it upside down in water to get rid of ants.
- The full pleated head nodded for days,
- then one breakfast it was darker pink
- and sweet-peony-rot overwhelmed.
- It shrivelled, the pleats closing in.
- I was about to learn the secret
- when my mother threw it in the compost.
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