Flowers in his Fingertips
By Katherine Wilson

He discovered the meaning of life
one night, drunk and dizzy on the
sweet starlight perfume flowing
through his veins.
He wrote his revelation
in Arabic, on a torn scrap of paper.
And for breakfast the next morning,
he swallowed the foreign syllables
one by one
savoring each word, each drop of ink
on a mortal tongue before they slipped back into nothingness,
into the hands of the gods.

Now he remembers dancing,
remembers dreaming,
remembers those hours of inspiration.
The memory of divine wisdom haunts him,
and he aches to touch it again.

I worry that he will fall
into the depths,
chasing the taste of an unfamiliar language
and that feeling of flowers
blossoming in his fingertips.

Katherine Wilson is currently a Senior at the Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts. Her poetry has been published twice previously, and she hopes to make the English language a career.