almost forgot

I went to a museum once,
where they had a greenhouse
and a beautiful flower
that was a huge fleshy
sagging bag, red-hued and
white-specked.
It had an oblong ellipsis mouth
at its top and you could
see inside to the pistils and
the pollen, swimming in the slippery
red.

The flower is a calico flower
native to the jungle
and hangs from the canopy
to the brush; carnivorous.
Sometimes it smells like
rotting meat to trick its prey.

I almost forgot it was a flower.

Yesterday I saw a photograph;
gelatinous ooze spilling
from the deflated head of a
girl who lay across the lap
of a man whose head was intact
and enclosed in the bud of a white turban.

Her skull was cracked like
jagged teeth and the red
spilled out like a
lazy tongue onto rough sand.

The child wore a patchwork dress,
her eyes were closed, the eyelids
the same dusky color as
wet sand.

I almost forgot it was a child.