You took me by the stem,

And pulled me by the neck, 

My naked roots hanging by a veinous string. 

Your long skeletal fingers beneath my chin, 

And your marble eyes taking me in,

as my coal-red petals slipped over my ears and eyes.

You made me deaf.

You made me blind.

You were the only sense I had left.

All  I could ever breathe, or touch,

All that was right,

All that was so, so dreadfully wrong.

So that when you left, I had no purpose but to wilt and to rot.

And I think it’s for the best,

That you killed me. 

It was the sole mercy you ever took, 

Lest I’d seen, in my woeful reflection,

The youth that you plucked from my scalp.