Yellow Flowers

This reminds me of you, he said,
a photo of a daisy in a glass
drowning in a drink
I will never taste. In school
the other girls picked pink and blue
so yellow was how I begged
for a face I could wear.
It is a lazy costume. I know
that inside, the bones molder,
mottled with chalky grief.
But today the dying buttercups
breath-hold gold in their lips.
Why should I settle for anything
less than sunflowers. Why should I
break my heart when I know
that beauty, like pain,
demands to be witnessed.