Pages with Pressed Flowers

Between the pages of pressed flowers,

I've tried to keep you safe;

To protect your laugh I tried,

just like I protect my pressed flowers.

Shades of sepia have tried to deface their colours;

but not my pressed roses.Where did you go? Look how they still live!

still smiling, still staining the pages of my books;

these colourless, odourless beauties.

I made space for all your said;

but there are so few words among so many pages,

So I ordered the flowers to weave themselves into your words;

to make them beuatiful and luminous;

so that all should know how little but yet how much we spoke!

A day will soon come when the flowers might crease and tear,

The greedy earth which swallowed your heart,won't hesitate to ravage these glorious fragments of me;

these my colourless, odourless beauties.

The worms will also come for their share.

For how long can I protect you? You, who is entwined among the pressed flowers?

How long before the worms of time and change come to feast on our memories,

and the creased petals?

So I look to the pressed roses;

unlike me they don't cry, they don't care.

They pay no heed to the malice that awaits them,

They are athrill to just creep among my lines,

stain my papered thoughts, and

disturb my punctuation marks.They disclose that the wrinkles, the afflictions are clamped to life's binding path.

Unmindful of morrow, they persevere to balm the pages of my distinct journals.

Heedless of fate, they form a fragrant sanctuary ,

for my papered dreams, my papered memories.

Even if it's for the shortest while, you are free but enclosed,

in this floral sanctum;

Even if it's for the shortest while, you will be safe.

Safe between these pages with pressed flowers.

For you father.

- from your daughter (who still picks flowers from public gardens and thinks they continue to live when they are pressed into her journal) :)

I miss you xx