Lilacs can drive you mad
by Susan Dugan
Lilacs can drive you mad, if you let them.
A regal madness, true. Every year the same
promises proclaimed, as if from above.
Every year the same assurances not quite
realized. Same sensory-overloaded
bouquet lost in shipping. Same mesmerizing
memories evoked, same intoxicating
perfume on the cusp of release. Slain once
more by passing storms, furious winds, or
simply that rot. Gnawing away at roots, cost
of striving to live too long among the dead.
Let’s be honest here. Lilacs will drive you
mad, if you let them. When a lilac tries to
bloom, we bow our heads, rush our reverent
nostrils toward it, as if inhaling a miracle we
too could manifest. As if, beyond all odds
stacked against us--gale, hail, drought,
flood, a sudden freeze. Hoping for the thaw
in relations that will waft us back to heaven
once more. Counting on a different outcome
than the last time those cockeyed-optimistic,
purple fools, promised, and failed, to bloom.
Susan Dugan has spent much of her working life as a freelance writer, writing everything from newspaper and magazine articles to ad copy, marketing brochures and radio scripts, as well as fiction and essays. Her short fiction has appeared in literary magazines including eclectica, JMWW, Carve, RiverSedge, Prosetoad, Amarillo Bay, The Saint Ann's Review, River Oak Review, and Echoes.
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