I Did Not Buy Flowers Today

Feeling slightly out of alignment with
the world, I stop at the grocery store 
looking for something to nudge me back 
onto the road of purpose I drive each 
day— home to work, work to home. I think 
of getting flowers, but would that be  
admitting something I can't say aloud? 
In there, the sunflowers are smaller 
than I remember: heads disheveled 
under LED lights, faces turned nowhere 
in particular. Have they, too, forgotten 
how to follow the sun? There's not one 
particular cause for blame— not the hike 
in oil prices nor the increasingly infertile 
soil from climate change, not the store 
and the unpredictability of supply and demand. 
Once, the hills of my childhood were dotted 
with the same yellow blooms. Their brightness 
reflected a light I never questioned, as if 
it would always be there, forgiving me 
everything before I even thought to say
what for. I try to think of that light again 
here, and in the end I leave the flowers 
with their price tags exactly where they are. 
I walk back into my day, hands empty 
of everything but this honesty.