Hydrangeas

Swaying in the breeze. Yes, there is a breeze. What stupid conceit led me to decorate this place? Fairy lights through the cosmos (as though the moon would be better painted another colour). Blue and white flowers grouped and swooning, except for one sprig that turns away from me to gaze upwards – defiant and mortal. Above them a lettuce of leaves, green and effulgent, shiny and textured, like the skin of a lizard held up to light. What led me to place this pretty thing here? Especially after I had removed every other living branch and piled them high as waste? It seems afternoon is a time when I can briefly imagine that I am someone whole, someone who places decorative things on the table. Now they tower over everything else that is otherwise there, that properly belongs there as clutter, as bits and pieces of stuff that fill my current life, or that lie on its margins, or that push towards a desolate interior, or that express that desolate interior entirely.