Catherine Owen

C a t h e r i n e   O w e n 

P o l l e n

The woman across from me keeps buying flowers. She puts them on her patio. Flowers in pots, plastic, ceramic and the flowers are sun, lilac, cosmos, African violet. When I open my window, the crowd of smells rushes into my prim living room where the settee purses its comfortless lips, the colours sing too ebulliently from the corners of my eyes as I try to sip my tea, Carlos the cat punctuating my feet. Every day, the flowers. And each night, the voices. Just noises really. Loud of his, a burr though the walls. And her wailing, hard soft hard. I could ask myself why doesn’t she leave him but I know something about how books become indistinguishable on the shelves and even limbs in the dark bed blur. She must rise before it’s light to buy the flowers. Melody’s Blooms. A short way down the street. Opens  at 6 a.m. He leaves even earlier than this. She breathes breathes breathes awhile. And by the time I can see her through the slivers of my blinds she is bending over petals, placing yet another pot down on the cement, then turning to go back in.

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