Flowers were her currency,

spent like a miser to pay for

her passage through the day.

 

Bunches of pink lilies saved

from bending to the ground with

their weight of heady blossoms.

 

The tiny spray of roses

so precious after this blight year.

The black-eyes Susans she knew

 

would wither with the morning

forcing her outside again with her

fist full of large bills: weeds to be

 

pulled, produce to be sorted, cats

to be fed. But these flowers,

her way of making change.