Dried Flowers

I dreamt of a cold hard ground reeking of Trench and blood and I remember reading Tolstoy before the slumber
I remember my dad telling his friends he had a fifteen year old daughter he is worried of, she reads Nabokov with dried flowers in it
It’s difficult for him you see, I remind him of the woman whose eye color I bear, gait I walk, whose lock I put behind my ear
He knows I can’t be put to sleep with anyone reading out to me
So he bought me Matilda when I turned 9 instead of dolls my sisters longed for
My sisters, they could put Austen to shame
They are wings, I am claws at best
One hasn’t yet bled, one sews socks to keep her 10 month old warm, one cries to her sleep because the boy next door broke her heart
I remember letting the guy who smelled like teen spirit inside me at 17, the only catch was I couldn’t tell where I slept last night to the other guy who says he loves me, it was surely not in the pines
I think you will come around one night, again
But it’s 3am and Bon Iver makes me believe you are still very lovable, with all your lies
But I think I may do it all over again
For how when you read out loud the fiction under my skin and I knew it was not nearly just pages being bled but I’d listened to them like a prayer they cursed at my mother’s funeral