BONESMOKE

A ribcage dissolves into lavender vapor among peonies the color of bruised mouths. The spine curves through the frame like it's trying to remember what it held together, vertebrae suspended in a cloud of forgetting. Flowers crowd in where a body used to be, thick petals and gold centers pressing close, almost suffocating in their tenderness.

This is what remains after someone leaves but their shape stays. The architecture of longing rendered in bone and bloom, the way love becomes physical even after the person turns to air. The smoke doesn't erase the skeleton. It softens it. Makes it beautiful in its absence, in its slow unbecoming.

The flowers aren't mourning. They're feasting. Petals open wide around the dissolving form like they've been waiting for this, for the body to finally give itself over to softness. This is how we hold onto people after they're gone, after they've hurt us, after we should know better. We let them become part of the landscape. We grow gardens around their bones and call it healing when really it's just another way of refusing to let go.