Pushing Daisies

The coroners open me up,
slit me down the middle and cracks
me open with a ball peen hammer.
They see it tangled
like a pair of wired apple earbuds around my
bones, plugged into my nervous system
like underground mycelium.

I suppose I thought you were planting a
rosebed within me.
I felt the seeds on my lips
and pictured scarlet flowers that
would bloom come springtime.
I could pluck petals with care
and place them on your eyelids while
We slept in your taunt nylon hammock.

Yet all that grew was ivy,
which could have been so lovely
to care for on a summer evening.
But in the nighttime the perennial clings tight,
putting strain upon my frame,
filling my throat with longing.

The coroners will put me into a scholarly article.
Snap pictures and make sardonic comments.
They’ll look at me like a case study,
of how not all things that grow will bloom.

***

Ben Stoll is a Vermont based poet who indulges himself in writing about the grotesque. He has hopes to teach poetry in the future, and to perhaps find his work in a textbook one day.