Text and Photograph by Megan Bowler

It seemed a waste to let the petals fall
and wither,
to grace and mingle with the hoovered dust.
There was a selfishness in keeping a flower,
cut and vased and terminal.

Doomed, they bloomed a frail week,
irredeemable,
and yet I could not part with the remainder.

Crushed and crispened under weighty student tomes,
then peeled gently
from printer paper, clinging.
Some crumbled,
too delicate to last.

The survivors, wizened with translucent pallor of colours past.

A nostos from sepulchred petals to a flash of joy.
Primed and pasted, the stilled dignity of an old-fashioned keep-sake,
Shadow-monument of the Flower’s glow.