When did you become something
so salted so
withered such that I may mill your
brittle petals between mortar and petals
mortar and pestle and
scatter those ashes to allow you
to create a fine-grained-mess of
what I thought could be mine and
what is most certainly not.
Whistling through the sycamores planting
their extremities firmly at the waters // water’s edge
the sound spinning elegies for
lost teeth and hard orange candy.
They will break and disintegrate just
as you did within my palms.