"The closest we get to freedom" [by Kirsten Chen]

is it Saturday morning
—talking to a lover in bed?
Nothing top-hits or big decisions
I mean something windy and forgettable.
Jazz breakfast. Construction alarm.
That must be it.
It can’t be the sun-rose skyline
or the one-way ticket.
Fuck that, it’s too easy.
Liechtenstein for half an hour?
It isn’t worth the stamp.
Better to have stayed behind
studying the bus driver’s
jacket as he phones his daughter in Naples.
Better to have stayed at home,
tending to the five-dollar bodega flowers,
dyed blue and still alive
an entire month later.
Those flowers, they’re free
free so much
as they are aware
of their own artifice
and stay in bloom anyway.