Sharon Mesmer

Flowers (after the Aztec ceremony, "Flowers are Offered") The moon shines in three places when I first offer him flowers. The moon and the evening star in a periwinkle sky like a sea of blue flowers. A mirror stands on a table when I first offer him flowers, and people are arranging their hair in that mirror, arranging flowers.  When I first offer him flowers my fingers are straight and brought together so the tips touch as in talk or song, in a dead language that means "flowers are offered."  My language is also dead, so I must instead offer flowers.  I offer flowers and I sow flowers.   I am the caretaker of flowers.  I pick flowers and search out flowers to bring to him in the temperate dining hall of the forest.  I string garlands of blue flowers like torches to light his way across the water.  He Is protected by a viper, so upon the water I cast a necklace of flowers, a hat, a brooch, a shield of blue flowers.  I construe a perfume of threaded and stewed flowers, and I clothe myself in flowers.  Thus flowers are seduction, discourse, a lengthy abandon.  Once hard and salty, he is now made completely of flowers, and when he speaks flowers fall from the must of his mouth, and from between his teeth, for he has eaten the flowers I have offered, and has forgotten he has ever been human.  I will ruin him with these flowers. I dreamed of him long ago.  And now I offer him flowers.

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