Poppy Red Was Her Flower

Amy Nocton

She was like a crinkled poppy; with the desire to drink dry dust.—Virginia Woolf

How were we to know her? She

was a whisper of the blue flame that once sustained

us with its white wild. Under her clothes,

she hid, or so we imagined, wings

—a crinkled secret—

of what they would become. Poppy

red was her flower with all that it carried, scarlet seasons

of her past—the burn

—of want. But that was yesterday,

and long before she began

to drink her dandelion wine. Before she began

to dry her collected pearls, lilac, and bleeding hearts,

and grind them

into dust.