Chinese Whispers

A daisy chain is passed around the circle.

Take this, you said to me. The whisper is the chain, a thread of sounds and fragile letters linked cautiously together. In the beginning the flowers were new, countless perfect petals crowded around a tiny sun. But in each hand they change a little, woven stems twisting around your tongue and mine. In your fingers a daisy can become a diamond. So will it be a chain of sunflowers falling from my lips, by the time the whisper comes full circle?

So be careful. Clumsy fingers will tear the ever-lengthening buttonholes and lose the words inside them. No-one wants to leave only drooping petals behind them on the grass.

Hand to hand, lips to ear, mind to mouth, the flowers fall from you to me.

But the chain is broken, the links are pulled apart, and some sounds are lost in the distance between lips, and no-one can repeat them. It was not a chain of sunflowers, but a necklace of pearls that was passed back to my hands. The thread was stretched and the letters twisted, but it was such a pretty thing.