Time Flies

When the red hibiscus flowers
bloomed in the sunshine,
you picked them,
put them in your hair,
your long soft fair hair,
and you were
the most beautiful person,
I had ever seen.

Then the hibiscus flowers faded,
as they always do.
They closed at sunset,
bloomed again at dawn,
just as the drugs
lit you up,
then cut you down.

I watched you sink.
I watched you suffer.
I watched myself lose you.
I still have nightmares of your descent.
Nothing I could do would halt it,
even if I’d realised death
was as inevitable as the night,
like the folding of the hibiscus flowers
at dusk,
and that the monsters who took you
would never pay,
for the way you died,

for the day you died.