The Corpse Flower, Geelong Botanical Gardens

Struck by it.

A planet erupting.

Limbs splayed out. Inner flesh.

An infested wound. Reopened for inspection.

The inside is capacious. A mercurial eye.

Filled with a mist. A deathly exhalation.

Of all that we see in daylight. Hide from ourselves.

Growing like a disease.

Like death in the mind of the first humans.

We, like Siddartha. In our walled garden.

Death is only a collection. Of shrill sirens.

Red and blue streaks. Always driving away.

Always arriving somewhere else.

This meat flower. This dissected heart.

With the stillness of a statue’s breath.

Filling our inner silence. Calling us forward.

To the thin place. Beyond the city walls.

To a bone white wood.

On the verge of morning.

I want to arrive there.

Clean. Like a diamond.

Free of hive anxiety.

Like a new world whispered in the ear of a child.

Like the first time you see your face in the mirror.

Like oblivion found in the eye of a flower. 

Quiet and still.

Writer: Matthew Phillips

Editor: Teagan Marsh