Credit: Audubon Florida, "Water Hyacinths, Clewiston, C" (1930). Audubon’s Everglades Science Center – Photographs. Image 410

Everything in this state has an underbelly more putrid or more beautiful
than what is on the surface. These petals the color of fairies’ lips

can make anyone believe in magick. Nature is always in drag.
An editor told me to stop using absolutes, but I can only write a poem

how I scream, laugh, or sing—with my full throat—
like these open-mouthed periwinkle heads cackling

at the sky. Everything always is not as it appears. Beneath the green
water, there are roots and bones and livings things that have learned

to live among their dead. But what we see is the most fantastic version
of fantastic in a state where songs are made of pythons’ hiss,

where ghosts dance with Spanish moss, where everything is invasive,
even the amoebas floating through our brackish veins.

Water—always plural—like flowers, reminds us
of everything we want to hold onto.

Gloria Muñoz is the author of “This is the Year, Your Biome Has Found You,” and ”Danzirly,” which won the Ambroggio Prize and the Gold Medal Florida Book Award. She is St. Petersburg’s current poet laure- ate, and the first Latina to hold that honor.