17
by Aimee Seu
I was twelve when someone told me foxgloves will kill you
if consumed, so I lay in the garden among the towers of pink
and black speckled blooms, shredding the velveteen of their flesh,
flaying the opaque flowers to press the petals to
my lips and then toss them aside. Daring myself
in the dappled light of their stiff stalks, my matted hair in the dirt.
The dusk would be beginning
to murmur unfamiliar things when the screen door opened and called
me in for dinner.
Five years later when someone told me
your name, I was consumed. I would steal away to lay
among your luminous blossoming body, the sleepy pollen of your
lungs, the rich poison oils wilting in your hair.
Long after dark, when nothing called me
in for dinner, I was hungry and
deemed it an honorable death.