Elysian

When I told you that
I love the neighbor’s tulips!
I didn’t expect to wake up
to a flowerbed
in kaleidoscope,
Tulipa in toto.

As I walked barefoot in the dirt,
you followed eagerly in my tracks,
dancing our familiar two-step
as you peppered me with facts.

Did you know,
you begin eagerly,
tulips are almost perfectly symmetrical?
Did you know,
you breathe heavily,
a tulip always finds the light?
And more than that –
you take my hand in crescendo,
– tulips are complex.  
They resist classification.
But also,
you pause, sobering,
a surgeon revealing the inevitable,
they’ll bloom only for a week,
maybe two at best.

So we lace ourselves together,
make our way to the ground,
and resolve to sleep outside.