Botany Footnotes

By Kevin McGowan

1. Epipogium aphyllum [ghost orchid]: We lost a second eight months after the first and now our house crawls with spirits who’ll never learn how to walk. It’s in the poise of your shoulder-blades as you stand scissoring the crusts off bread to make tamago sando. It’s in my face behind the broadsheet at the kitchen table. It’s in the drip of the taps and the settee’s cold leather. This silent guilt. Us traitors – us progenitors of nothing. Another day without words. Our world festers in slow motion, like apples in a root cellar.

2. Jasminum officinale [common jasmine]: I take the subway to work. It’s sardine-packed. There’s nowhere to sit and people jostle one another, awkward marionettes jerking from handrails. Why else would I smell of perfume? I won’t confess to imaginary sins. Break things all you want – we could do with being less materialistic. Hell, bulldoze the house down. Set it alight. Ashes are the final human truth. I am looking you in the eyes. I am.

3. Ranunculus acris [meadow buttercup]: Remember the old park at the mouth of the glen? Rife each summer with buttercups. We’d lie on our backs among them and glow golden. The hours zipped past like unseen comets until rays lanced the clouds and, still, we remained, holding hands without knowing what it meant. Neither of us were precocious enough for that. Just two unwitting childhood sweethearts facing time’s ruination.

Kevin McGowan is a writer based in Stirling, Scotland. He has had numerous poems and short stories published. His first chapbook, ‘Eastern Thistles’, was printed by Hybrid Press (Dreich) in 2020.