We go into the trees and find a field of wildflowers. Singing, we pick, pick apart and pull together until heaps of flowers fall out of our arms. Milkweed, queen anne’s lace, indigo, poppies, buttercups. Daisies, lavender, bulbous eyebright, until there are none left. Ants and aphids crawl down our backs like sweat. Bees and hummingbirds vet us, furious. Pollen paints our hands, our skin bakes, basted with inchworm spittle and stems’ broken juices. We find a field of green grass, surrounded by trees. A rash is spreading up my neck. Your eyes water. We picked them all, and never return.

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