Attachment

Each spring the calla lilies outside my kitchen window unfold their white spiral cones – of their own sweet desire, since I have not planted them, nor enriched their soil for over six years. Each spring I watch their thick radiance persist through the early summer. Awed and astonished, I feel an ever more insistent attachment to this fearless erotic display of power. Then, inexorably, the heartbreak sets in as the petals wilt slowly but relentlessly away, until I stand, abandoned and grief-stricken, in the naked absence.