My orchid died last winter.

I kept the sickly sticks by my wall, it was all I had left for their bloom to never come.

Shouldn't have brought anything still breathing where they cannot survive

just to breathe in a charade night by day.

Not in the blinking purple and blues

slapped across walls, could there be found comfort.

Deluded to find sweetness

in the rotten apple gifted

to seep into another person not yet touched by its bane.

It was the first ever such burn

for a child's tongue.

It dizzied

and blurred

for the next eight years to set the standard

for it's frequent returns.