Dried Flowers

Vera, the butcher shop and deli owner with the strong neck, has stayed in a deserted mill town in Ohio because she was born in a deserted mill town in what was then Poland’s new republic, and only war has moved her.

        She’s overheard Americans waiting at the mechanic’s or buying apple cider donuts at the farmstand say, the photos were so moving or war makes me question how I witness. Even cattle by the road notice people watching them. They’re perturbed, as if they know the truck driver that loads them at the end of the week means to kill them.

        In fact, there’s the story of a dairy farm across the road from a retired schoolteacher’s house and the Holstein that refused to follow other old cattle up the ramp and into the trailer every slaughtering season. The farmer just kept her around each year.

        But now the acreage is a Walmart, so everyone wonders what happened to that cow, knowing what happened to the other livestock.

        When townspeople discuss this, they wear the expression you might have if you were staring at a child’s brown eyes in a photo until they watered, like a miracle, dripping onto your hand.

        Vera doesn’t call it superstition to refuse to keep pictures of dead people. She shudders to hear dried flowers stay in some homes for years. A death mask to a meadow. She’d rather see the meadow. She’d rather watch life claw at the town’s rot.

        She has no interest in hearing about her hometown, whether it was leveled by heavy bombers or it recovered after the war—with peonies bouncing back and the roads streaming with children who’ll have no reason to move and will or won’t move themselves.