Fidelity

Grocery store carnations
arranged on a kitchen table—
call things what they are—they’re dead,

the flowers, the water only delays
their dying. Online, a biology forum
debates what constitutes death:

Tissue dies, someone writes,
and everyone agrees though not
on a definition. Theory of mind,

theories of everything—I trained
to be an English teacher for years
before I suffered under a principal

who warned me:  pronouns are heavy here,
and I agreed, though we meant
different things, he was telling me

to avoid teaching a part of speech.
My friend had a hysterectomy
before the state could take away

his right to do it; more friends
married last year for the same reason,
rings bought with a promise

to upgrade them in the future.
I like mimicry in nature, eyespots
on a moth, though I recognize

that change is one response to brutality—
like Judith slaying Holofernes,
her sword passing cleanly through

the despot’s neck; when the people
of her besieged city saw his severed
head, they must have applauded,

they must have felt such unrepentant joy.