STILL LIFE WITH TULIPS BY V. P. LOGGINS

Each day I’ve passed the flowers
someone set at her door, not letting

myself think of her passing.
Like Plato’s half-lit cave, my mind’s

been shadows on the stony walls
keeping her death in darkness.

But now the flowers are fading,
scraping the wound of consciousness

as a child scrapes open a scab.
Which is why I’ve drawn this vase

of words, filling it with tulips,
to stand against the wilting light,

gracing the walls of memory
bleeding with what she loved.

V. P. Loggins is the author of The Wild Severance (2021), Bright Hill Press Poetry Book Competition winner, The Green Cup (2017), Cider Press Review Editors’ Prize winner, and The Fourth Paradise (Main Street Rag 2010). His poems appear in Poet Lore, Poetry Ireland Review, The Southern Review and elsewhere.