Dead Flowers

At my wake,

Let there be dead flowers.

Beautifully arranged, delicately dried, 

Tastefully situated in fanciful vases.

But dead.

Do not send colorful, cut blooms too soon destined for dirt,

Placed in the cheapened glass of florist overstock.

Let them exist already beyond life,

With muted tones and curled leaves wrapping grotesquely shaped stems,

Protecting a memory of what was.

If the heart cannot bear the morbid desiccation of floral carnage, 

And your insistence is upon living  flora,

Find greenery in need of nurture, sitting forgotten on a sale shelf.

Intern its verdancy in deep black soil and an urn-like pot,

Ready for the griever to continue life.