Little plant in the ever-damp field
where a stream always floods
and the muck dries its impermanence
in late sun—I have sought your sharp
petals in mornings when the sour smell
of coffee and cinnamon drove me to run
out of doors, retching in snowbanks,
your light purple buds buried
deep in the blue-white shadows
of winter. If I could, I would have sipped
slowly the tea steeped from your blooms
and longed to be sick. What remedy can exist
for the heart snipped from itself, the womb
sucked quietly sterile and cast out in the snow?

—Chelsea Woodard

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