Paper Flowers

Coming home and coming round

from a fugue

i’m awakened from a reverie

covered in blanket mummification

constricted by the weight

of ocean

of reptile death

of family

covered like the humidity

that comes off your body

pressed against me

your kiss too hard for breath

i remember summers and swimming

lovemaking beneath god and man

the old town center and holding hands

crushed by the weight of calendar pages

pressed to paper flower thickness

i recall our last times sweetly

bitterly

hardly at all