The Language of Flowers by Aleathia Drehmer

The Language Of Flowers

In the blue light of a computer screen
I’d pretended to be asleep
while you held my foot, crying.

There were unspoken atrocities
bleeding through the layers
of your pajamas,

secrets you didn’t have the courage
to share, knowing in the end, I’d be
just as fickle as the rest.

Those nights in the dark, with me falling
between the makeshift mattresses,
I thought your touches were the language
                                                                                      of flowers.

I remembered all of their parts
disarticulated in your mouth,
whispered into my spine

with a wholeness that neither
of us could remember enough
to make it tangible.

And then at the airport,
I told you I loved you
as I walked away, jets drowning

out the words. You paused,
as if knowing, back stiffened
and shoulders rolled down
                                                              as I flew away.

Aleathia Drehmer was once the editor of Durable Goods and In Between Altered States, but now spends most of her time writing novels. She has recently published poems in Spillwords, Impspired Magazine, and Open Skies Quarterly. Aleathia has upcoming work in Piker Press, M 58 Poetry, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Cajun Mutt Press.  www.aleathiadrehmer.com