Watching Your Love Bloom

I worry in bars. When I enter a
beer, I tell too much—too little, and I set
shard rim with fingertip. O stop this foam
from flourishing! I hate to watch others
flourish. I’m a diminishing creature. Love
I bear no sense or will. Your victories
affect neither headspace, nor negate physical
alignment in our collective nature. Love cas
cades from tall mountains into flush plains, and your reigns
have loosed themselves all over the fields, it’s a mess
so beautiful when tiny buds of your success expand
into purple rose and garden
ia, beeblossom, hyacinth out the window, botanical
into the grateful lanes. You overgrow roadways. You
crack concrete where vehicles now fear to tread. You
send them home, guzzlehungry, tanks dry.
My god, you explode, though they are mechanism.

Kari Flickinger's poetry and short stories can be found in Written Here: The Community of Writers Poetry Review, Panoply, MilkJournal, Susurrus, Falcon Scratch, The Daily Californian, and The DVC Inquirer. She is an alumna of UC Berkeley.