No Occasion

I bought them at the gas station

on the way home from nothing—

yellow carnations, already a little tired,

the stems in that thin plastic

that crinkles when you breathe near it.

No one to give them to.

I put them in a glass of water

and went to bed.

By day four the petals had gone thin

at the edges, translucent,

curling inward the way things curl

when they're trying to hold something in.

I kept meaning to throw them out.

Day five I left without doing it.

Came home to the stems gone soft

in the cloudy water,

the yellow still there—

just less of it,

just enough to be the idea of yellow.

I bought them for no occasion.

They died for no occasion.

I still haven't thrown them out

and I'm not ready to say what I was hoping

they would turn into,

or to admit they didn't.