My daughter sleeps for days in a blue room
through which daylight filters in a sequence of bars.
On the fourth day, she wakes.
There is a vase
filled with fuchsias next to her.
I watch her gaze move up the fluted
glass, up the stems—so I snap
off a flower
and place it in her palm.
“This has a mouth,” she says, “tear it up.”
Then she opens wide and eats it.
She does not remember eating
the flower. Months and years
pass, and it’s like that to this day:
now she is grown up, very tall
and slender, like a stalk.