Flowers, withering without water.

Drying, dying, none to care.

Petals dropping, one by one,

Dying, drying, abhorrent, uncared.

The slightest breeze and several fall

Dried, died, yet still fragrant.

Their perfume fills only the imagination.

Reality is the smell of stagnation.

The aroma of death,

By midday sun or moonlit night

They fall, dead, dry, parched.

A flower head bends, droops,

As if looking down,

searching for the water.

Leaves, curl and crisp

Pale to the eye, pallid to the touch

Drying, perishing, bleached of colour.

Stalk, brown and shrivelled.

Crisp to touch, hard, unforgiving.

This is my life, my love, my death.

My very existence, displayed in a vase.

Arranged with care and an eye for form.

Such beauty once was there

Now dead, so dead, so dead. So very dead.

This is what I dread.

©Joseph R Mason 2021