The Flower Press

It was the sort of thing given to little girls:

sturdy and small, round edged, wooden and light.

I stalked the pasture’s rough and waist-high grass

for worthy specimens: the belle amid the mass,

the star shaming the clouds of slighter,

ordinary blooms. The asters curled

inside my sweat-damp palms, as if in sleep. Crushed

in the parlor’s stifling heat, I pried

each shrinking petal back, and turned the screws.

But flowers bear no ugly bruise,

and even now fall from the brittle page, dried

prettily, plucked from memory’s hush.