God, I must be so convenient for you.
I want to be careful.
No,- I want to be adored.
I am absolutely incapable of being careful, and relentlessly capable of care.
You son of a bitch, you brought me a flower.
Not flowers.
Not some thing I can appreciate and let shrivel up by Wednesday
Like ten bucks of affection gone dry.
No, you,
You fucking asshole
Brought me a beautiful thing which I will surely destroy.
I was raised by a borderline wood nymph, and yet
Inherited nothing close to a green thumb,
I am reckless with plants
I am preposterously incapable.
Give me a man at his lowest depths and lord
Can I resurrect him with my tongue alone.
But give me a plant and watch it be
Smothered, drowned by my keen attention.
I am nothing if not
an affectionate thunderstorm.
And God, this poor blossom,
This orchid, doomed,
I’ve named her Eurydice.
For I, as Orpheus, shall do my best to keep her from death.
I do nothing but kill things.
God save her from me.
My friend warned me that she will shed her petals in the coming weeks
As the city turns cold and retreats.
Well, I will say, “here is Eurydice, my stick who imagines she is a flower.”
My friend warns me, further,
that the stem will also die,
but there will be leaves, and promises
A hefty requirement of patience
A relentless necessity of due diligence.
Eurydice, soon stumped and longing for sun
Perched at a north-facing window
On the corner of my dining room table
Dormant.
Indirectly sunlit.
Gorgeous,
Not dead yet.
Some thing I must nurse back in to existence,
A thing I must watch die
And sleep
And be reborn
And not once acknowledge as an analogy for anything in my life.
Alessandra Ranelli 