Purple Coneflowers

by Callan Latham
Illustrations by Joanna Moody

There is a styrofoam head
in the corner. Makes sense.
My brain is also made of styrofoam.

So is my tongue. My body.
My elbows and my kneecaps.
All of me is false clouds, spiraling

into big sky. My breath, a smoke signal
in burning fire mountains. I am the flower that
you find on the sides of roads, huddled along the edges

of ditches like abandoned old sheds, like the shells of
styrofoam bodies, not mine. I was a late bloomer.
I say the words in my head and they sound like

two different songs. I love the prickly brown tops
of coneflowers. And the purple. I want a butterfly
to land on me. I want to rub pollen between my fingers

until I am stained with birth. Just imagine having a body
made of styrofoam. I would be unliving.
Do you see me as the world? I am a field of honeybees,

slowly disappearing. I am an ocean of figments,
slowly filling. Maybe I should put my head in the corner.
Leave it to rest. Maybe that’s what they all do.