The flowers look out of place
in these grey days
like girls the morning after the prom
smudged and puffy
in their taffeta dresses
eating flapjacks at Denny’s.
The house up the street has gone all out,
she’s even planted flowers in the basket of a tricycle
as though anything that stopped moving
for a few minutes
was fair game.
It should make me cheerful,
all those pansies
like butterflies on sticks
but the rain dominates the palette
making the graphic designer in me
want pine trees and yew hedges,
not the hoopla
of so much purple.
I try to tell my hairdresser later that day
about how fuchsia can be a yelling kind of colour
but this reminds her of her ex-husband
and how she is worried about her teenage daughter
so we talk about that and other things
as she straightens my hair
while the radio warns of a flood watch
and the flowers in her flowerboxes
throw their heads back
and drink.