In  my  flower  bed,  I  hesitate  to  be  delighted  by  everything I have worked for in my tiny territory in the heartland of America, where the memes are good enough to be Band-Aids

for suffering, the memes are of ’50s housewives saying, I’m ready for some blessings that aren’t in disguise, and where still more daylilies have opened into paroxysms of orange so orange

it hurts. The grocery’s florist gives a short lecture on pain: to stay alive, blooms require fresh cuts. I imagine you asking what no child would ask: What does this prove? The lilies echo

the solar explosions a paintball makes on a surface. #Blessed is a yellow decal pressed on our neighbor’s front door. Hose nozzle hissing in my hand, I recall my high school French:

Je suis blessée. I am hurt. Once, it was a blessing to be close enough to be splashed by the blood of the sacrifice. To look wounded. Hence the word. Small bloom of dull red blood—

This morning, all I want is to look unharmed, to know you were meeting me at the mouth of this world. What to call that feeling in the mind like a magnet pulling toward the fridge?

Blessing  inches  toward  blessure.  A   green   beetle   hovers above  the  speckled  throat  of  a  lily.   My  longing  unfolds like a pocketknife. I am so close to answering you.