In My Father's Suit
Dan Zinno

Because the only window
in our apartment looks out onto a 
never-ending pattern of brick –
no treetops, no sky,
because I seem to be carrying
a tenacious sadness that leaves
my life lackluster,
my mother brings me pink tiger lilies
during one of her visits.
They stand in a clear vase
on the kitchen table.
Two weeks later you ask, “What’s this
red stuff by my fork?”
Bits of burnt-orange pollen
had fallen where you eat
along with dry husks of petals that have lost
their pink.
“I keep meaning to throw those flowers out,”
you say after a pause, 
offhandedly, as if their fragile stalks 
were yours to dispose of
and, while they are little more
than relics of what were blossoms,
I can’t help but feel
you’ve been presumptuous
“My mother brought them,” I want to say.
They were never yours
and strange how you don’t understand
that I still cherish something
even after it’s dead.