FRUIT FLIES BY ASHLEY MYERS

How long do we stare at a toppled basket

or rotting pear, drooling brown out the bottom,

bat fruit flies away instead of tossing the inedible flesh?

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We watch flowers die,

keep them until the stench is uglier

than the shriveled petals—

beautiful some days,

why else would we hang bouquets

upside-down in the closer

to dry, preserve their death?

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Is it laziness, resignation,

the comfort of disorder,

or the need to see how long it can all last?

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(And if we half-heartedly wipe our sleeve

over a dusty framed picture on the desk,

it will be eerily re-coated in what feels like a day.

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Those faces will become artifacts anyway,

portraits of ghosts

until a stranger heaps them in a trashcan grave.)