Bruises

We used to meet at the empty brown warehouses
because their boarded in windows smelled like secrets,
kept the cold grey boredom of winter
from our throats.
The soil around them was, like the rest, forgotten
and filled with dry glass, rusted iron,
and daffodils.
Growing every Spring, around the ghosts,
sunshine in a minefield. Miracles.
One winter day we took rocks
and dug up the soil, pulled each perennial bulb
from the gravel, and,
with shards of glass we cut them apart.
Hundreds of precise surgeries, searching
for organs shaped like the heart.
Leaving next Spring's blooms
in bruised strips on the broken pavement.
Maybe it was everything we knew of promise,
all we understood of hope.