Flora

A sleepy seed, its secrets smooth, contained.
To see if it might fit, she buried it
deep up the gungey tunnel of her nose.

That night it woke inside her dream-hot head,
sprouted roots,
threadlike and pale and sinister,
that tendrilled from her nose
like grandad's long white nostril hairs.
A panicked pinkie in the morning
delved warm mulch, met nothing dark, hard, alien.
Funnelled, maybe,
by her clever body to her throat,
and swallowed harmless as an apple pip.

Years on, she feels sometimes
the budding promise of a sneeze, tilts
her head to catch it, tensed toward
the fizz that grows with each short breath,
that radiates through nose and eyes and open-mouth

till she, quite still, is slammed
by blinding yellow,
gasp of perfume,
scorched by possibility.