A CENTERPIECE


The boys draw shapes in pollen on the table. I have just removed the sunflowers we cut and brought home. I am not as afraid of my death as I used to be. There were moments amid the wide sunflower fields I could not see them, though they are always too loud to be lost. One wets his finger in his mouth and with pollen draws marks on his brother’s face and calls it war. It’s hard to see death in this, in the pollen and the color. I will replace the fresh sunflowers with an arrangement of silk aster from the basement. Then a cracked ceramic pumpkin. Then something wintry but green. One boy finds a yellow mark in the mirror and says he is cut. He says he is bleeding out sunlight. He says I must shut my eyes and hide, or he will blind and kill me.


Brendan Todt