Watching me ageless, broken, proud
of the skin I’ve formed around my fragile soul,
I see you in my memory no more
than a whisper of air through a new form,
a new form.
Yes, I am different. But the same.
I am strong, independent, empowered,
but outside still that delicate flower that always you treated me as.
I was ever so much more than you let me be.
And yet I hid myself away,
afraid of being broken again.
And who can blame me?
When there are trees falling threatening to crush me,
weeds choking me like the lies of August,
lightning sparking fires all around me
like the fire of rage bursting into flame
in every month since.
It was never easy being a flower,
and I always yearned to at least be a rose,
if only to possess the thorns.
That one time you brought me a rose,
I played with the thorns
and dreamed I was fierce.
If I had to be a flower,
I would have liked to have been a rose.
You bought me calla lilies, though,
and they were beautiful
and they were pure
and they were everything you saw me to be,
and nothing I had ever truly been.