Amaryllis

Just a bulb in a pot with dirt up to its knees, it got the morning sun and sat. For weeks hardly anything stirred and then the first signs of a stalk stole in, the tease of new leaves. Some days I'd work all day and feel it crunching highward. Some days I'd think I could hear its slow ascent, and then finally the buds were there, pregnant with bloom, and still I waited.

Two days ago, the first unfurling. Yesterday, the bright red bells pealed. Today there was sun and the heavy-headed amaryllis had begun to lean, a precipitous angle, and I took a photograph for fear that tomorrow all this going forward, gaining mass, would be lost to gravity.

I wanted a record of the beauty that had been.