Flowers by Cynthia Zarin

Flowers

 

This morning I was walking upstairs

from the kitchen, carrying your

beautiful flowers, the flowers you

 

brought me last night, calla lilies

and something else, I am not

sure what to call them, white flowers,

 

of course you had no way of knowing

it has been years since I bought

white flowers—but now you have

 

and here they are again. I was carrying

your flowers and a coffee cup

and a soft yellow handbag and a book

 

of poems by a Chinese poet, in

which I had just read the words “come

or go but don’t just stand there

 

in the doorway,” as usual I was

carrying too many things, you

would have laughed if you saw me.

 

It seemed especially important

not to spill the coffee as I usually

do, as I turned up the stairs,

 

inside the whorl of the house as if

I were walking up inside the lilies.

I do not know how to hold all

 

the beauty and sorrow of my life.