Diary of a Floral Delivery Worker, 2021

With my fingernails, I unbury a past life.
The wet, gritty autumn
soil stings

my fingertips—my sight
funnels inward: no matter

the occasion, I was funereal,
ornamented
with embalmed,

painted flowers and their ungodly
draftiness. Their vivid
petals already

drifting
into the next world.

I delivered them to Valentines,
funerals, birthing rooms.
Promises. Promises

kept. And I delivered them like births—