We buy a speckled ceramic vase for his mother
and then we buy a new vase for ourselves.
The vase we buy ourselves is glass, hand-blown,
twisted and prismatic. There’s an Italian word for it, surely.
Before this glass vase we had a ceramic vase:
floral and millennial pink, yet vaguely 70s.
We grew out of it. And before that now-tacky vase
we didn’t have a shared vase.
I had a simple glass cylinder in my old apartment. Someone
else was done with it, and I never used it.
Before I took that vase from the giveaway pile
in my old job’s kitchen, dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
There were those that walked, like the stegosaurus,
with those leafy spikes, and those that flew,
like the pterodactyl, who was just hoping to be home
in time for dinner, and those who swam,
like Jeannine. And then the dinosaurs were gone,
and some little shrew got smart, and climbed a tree,
and came back down, and stood straight up, and blamed
his wife for his new problems. And then to apologize,
he brought her flowers, a gorgeous assortment, a fiery bouquet
of roses and marigolds and goldenrods and then,
for many years, I was alone with my free vase,
and then we loved a pink vase, and now
we’re not quite sure which flowers would look best.
…
Misha Solomon (he/him) is a homosexual poet in and of Tiohti:áke/Montréal. He is the author of two chapbooks: FLORALS (above/ground, 2020) and Full Sentences (Turret House, 2022). His work has appeared in The /tƐmz/ Review, Leste, Yolk, and is forthcoming in Vallum. He is currently pursuing his MA at Concordia.
