The House That Counts in Flowers

I cannot remember the first bouquet.

Only that there must have been a day
when I stood beneath the bright, indifferent lights
of a grocery-store ceiling
and chose, for no reason anyone could name,
to carry beauty home in my arms.

I cut the stems at the kitchen sink,
watched the water receive them,
and set the roses on the table
where the afternoon could come upon them softly.

For one week,
the house seemed to remember it had a heart.

Each time I came through the door,
there they were,
opening without urgency into the room,
asking nothing of me
except that I stay long enough to see them.

Then the petals loosened at the edges.
Their heads bowed with a tenderness I recognized.
The water grew cloudy with the cost of keeping.

I could not make myself throw them away.

So I bound their stems with string
and hung them upside down,
as though loss, if held carefully enough,
might become another form of blooming.

Then I brought home more.

Another vase.
Another week of color.
Another small mercy
waiting for me on the table.

When those began to fade,
I lifted them from the water
and gave them to the ceiling.

Again.

Again.

Until the habit became so familiar
it disappeared into the week,
one beautiful ordinary thing
among all the others I forgot to count.

The roses gathered above doorways.
They darkened in the corners.
They leaned from beams and curtain rods,
their petals slowly surrendering
velvet into paper,
from fragrance into proof.

The house filled with them
the way a life fills with days:

quietly,
completely,
while the heart is busy surviving.

I have never known how to belong to time.

Clocks break the day
into pieces too small to hold.
Calendars ask every life
to fit itself inside a square.

I forget dates.
Lose whole months.
Look up and find another season
already waiting in the yard,
as if it had arrived while I was looking away.

But here,
time has made itself visible.
Weeks I have passed through and survived

have gathered here in bouquets.

Years now reveal themselves

in archways of deepened color
as evidence of a life
I nearly forgot to notice.

Above me hang the ordinary days
that did not know they were sacred:

mornings I woke without applause,
evenings I returned to my own door,
weeks in which no miracle announced itself
except that I was still here
and something beautiful
stood in water, waiting.

I thought I was preserving flowers.

I know now
they were preserving me.

Keeping the shape of time
after I had lost it.

Holding each vanished week
by the stem.

There are years suspended over my head now,
whole seasons bent into garlands,
their colors deepened
by everything they have endured.

I walk beneath them
from room to room
and feel no sorrow
for what has withered.

Nothing here has been asked
to remain young.

Nothing has been discarded
for changing.

The roses are allowed
to become what time makes of them
and still be beautiful.

Perhaps that is why the house feels peaceful.

It does not pretend the passing did not happen.

It lets time enter,
lets it drink from the vase,
lets it open completely,
lets it lower its tired head.

Then, gently,
it gives time somewhere to rest.

And so the years do not leave me empty-handed.

They gather in the rafters.
They sleep above the doors.
They brush my shoulders
when I cross from one room into another,
reminding me I have been here all along.

I do not know what day it is.

But the house knows.

The house has counted every week
in petals.

The house has learned

to keep the time in flowers.