Tissue Paper Flowers

Tissue paper flowers by the bed
dead.
They have a name
I don’t know it
just call them
tissue paper flowers.

I bought them so I wouldn’t have to
change the dragonsnaps
when mould slithered around the stems
sat bobbing in the water like
tiny nordic gnomes.

These were the least dead looking dead
I mean dried
flowers I could find
because the petals stay pink
purple and white.
But now I think

my toddler dies every day.

Last month
he still needed to
hold my hand as he
rushed down the slide like
like a pelican
dive bombing into the sea.

Three months ago
he did not scream
fat globular tears rolling down
red cheeks because he wanted
to brush teeth
MORE.

I’m quite certain this giant baby
Bôh in his pillow fort
is not the same dry-fingered bird
I shielded with a pillow from cold wind
the day we left the hospital.

Maybe these flowers
miss the point.

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Poppy Postance is a Whakatū-based writer who lives with her partner and young toddler. She previously worked as a ghostwriter and editor, and has published poems in Tarot Poetry Journal.