Floral Collar from Tutankhamun’s Embalming Cache – a poem by Grace Massey

Floral Collar from Tutankhamun's Embalming Cache  

cornflowers, poppies, three thousand years 
of dust, beads indigo among olive leaves 
already withered even as the tomb was sealed

and you who wove and sewed into the night
we have met, you know, among the licorice-scented
olive trees, in the poppy fields, wading among the reeds
as fish prod our ankles, we have together 
pricked our thumbs stitching nightshade berries 
to the boy king’s collar, our blood staining the blossoms 

we have exchanged lovers' glances, flirted
from across rooms and millennia, kissed
secretly and so briefly in alleyways and gardens

I have touched your hair

I reach for your calloused hands, cradle them in my own,
know that you endure in the flowers, the beads, 
the brittle papyrus

Grace Massey‘s poetry combines careful observation with elements of the spiritual and mystical. She has been published in Vita Brevis, Soul-Lit, Spry, and Ekphrastic Review, among others. When she isn’t writing, she’s dancing, in her garden, or working with shelter cats.