The Destructors

It’s happening again: hungry aphids are tearing holes in the flowers’ skin—

sunlight leaks through, fades into sluggish dirt. It’s only

flushed petals with turned up lips they crave, burrowing

straw jaws into tender pores. I hear them chomping barrenness

into the garden, but I cannot see them—the waxy creatures weakening

what took months to build, my fingers still raw from raking away

bent twigs and cobwebbed flies.

The aphids don’t know

doubt,

unlike my static hands, the autumnal fear resonating

out of the past when the flowers thinned into suicides—too brittle to endure

the chomping. I found their bodies

cross-hatched against grass blades, a trail narrowing off the Earth

dusk settling

beneath my ribcage.

I could not save them. The flowers

should be wrapped in clay and

heated into armored statues that

breathe but don’t soften—

always tilted toward the blissening sun,

But how can I harden them into colorless stagnants? They would no longer be able to nourish

love’s flutterings, its breezy touch.

For now the destruction will continue until my hands regain motion

and the aphids defeat into dirt.

Published by Lingerpost