A second grader said, “all the flowers
are dead people.” It felt like rain
from someone else’s umbrella dripping down
the back of my neck. I worried
in drizzles and drops for all the dead
people who grew into flowers named weeds
purslane, periwinkle,
morning glory,
dandelions blown forever into breath.
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.
I worried for all the flowers plucked, cut,
purchased, apology flowers,
adultery or apathy or words so cross
they have x’s for eyes.
Flowers screaming, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,
Please.”
Flowers screaming, “take me back.”
Screaming, “never let me go.”
The rain everywhere, all at once, screaming, lightning loud, “I’ll do
anything.”
I worried for forgiveness or forgetting or
bury this alive.
MJ McGinn received his MFA from Adelphi University and was a VCCA resident in 2019. His work has been named to the Wigleaf 50 best very short stories of 2017 and has previously appeared in the Guernica/PEN flash series, New Flash Fiction Review, Firewords, Bridge Eight, and elsewhere. He lives in Philadelphia.