Bought the bulb as a gift, boxed with
soil, pot,
all it needed to grow and watched
the flicker of time's lapse
lengthen its green shadow, a scratch
in a leaf like a wink
and a smile, daily tracked its shoots
swelling thick, the shape of the crack
for the eventual blood red bud You
in shock each day it stretched
to bloom, velvet, vermillion, keeping us rapt
as if it would suddenly speak, a silence
you broke when you knocked it
to drop from the counter, the flower
snapped, the remainder placed
in a mock decanter. A week later,
white mold frosting it's tips,
we closed the book on that flower, our lives
once caught in it's grip, but now released.