Mimosa

She was a Mimosa.
She was spirited, ardent
A girl of Ann Arbor.
Freckles like the map of Romania.
A fever to the health around her,
like her religion,
an heirloom of hope entwined
in years of tragedy.

A boy with sharp features.
A flea-bitten apartment.
A bookshelf of Tolstoy and Kahlil Gibran.
A canvas by a white window,
hands splash of paint.
Crimson, Cerulean, Creamy Daffodil.

That boy with sharp features,
wrote letters like back-shelved novels,
to a hospital in Baltimore.
One hundred words or less.

She clawed for solid ground.
But she remained a cluster of fog,
a ghost swimming over pools
designed and purposed
for flooding sunlight.
But she's the cloud of dust now,
no longer the vivid smoke of a flaming Camel.
She is the ash, the embers,
crumbling under one gentle hand,
disintegrating onto the pages of a book
she once read with passion.

The temper,
the hot flickering temper in the air.
Once like a fiery affection,
sitting by the window waiting.
A widow frozen in dry ice,
as the last candle is blown out,
a silent drop in the room's clarity.
Velvet and violent,
she was a Mimosa.