Yesterday

Yesterday it seemed that every rose

In Fort Greene

Opened, petals flung wide to catch

The sun, or just the warmth of humans

Radiating joy, flowers laid bare,

Or maybe not, bare makes it sound

Like they were somehow stripped

Raw by negative circumstance,

When it was in fact the opposite:

These flowers were as alive as anything,

They were awake, and you could tell,

If you were looking, that they were trying

To make their beauty available

To those of us carrying broken hearts.

I was running in the soup of the day,

Summer having descended overnight,

And I had to stop, the roses

Were too irresistible, and I was feeling

So broken, maybe you know that feeling

Of things breaking apart inside you

Like a jigsaw puzzle, all those pieces

Tumbling around in a confused jumble,

And you having to move through the world

Filled with sharp edges, bloated

With sadness, so bloated

Your jeans don’t fit, your body

Holding onto itself for dear life, your heart

Racing from the weight of your sadness,

A heart that, when it looks in the mirror,

Sees only a stranger there.