short poem, untitled

Untitled

The flowers are in a matchbook

folded over in a white bloodshot eye

ready to strike against any hard look

heat and flame held in the fingers

like a man in love

with the scent of a candle the flower is a flame

when nothing further can be lit

against my hard heart that has a strip

 I use for the strike of the many wild

or the bone in my arm opened a peony

drooping from a pocket of dirty jeans

 the flowers in the matchbook

were mostly gone when we met in October

and the tire marks on the street

made its own smoke

when the face turns to ash

 and the white eye no longer red

has found its own vision

found its own bed


 -Sheri Grutz