a banana blackened on the kitchen counter.

cherries decayed in the fridge

and bruised in the passenger seat of my car,

pruned by the prowling sun that broke through the windows.

I crushed the cherries between my fingers,

their gritty yellow skin hiding beneath my nails

as the pits slipped out of their meat.

the sympathy lilies dried and fell to the counter

and the stems fermented in the vases.

it’s a miracle I kept the geraniums alive.

their eight pink heads were only two

the day before the news,

two days before I spent most hours behind a steering wheel

staring at roads too dry and skies too cloudless,

every song lyric an elegy, the passenger seat nesting

garbage: mucus, dead plants, and immortal plastic bags.