While your curved blooms climb higher,
the beets rest beneath layers of compost heat,
egg shell peels, and decaying newspaper headlines
depicting a stolen girl, a crashed war vessel,
a new vaccine cure-all.
Hard as fists, purpling in the dirt, whether shoved
in a corner where nothing else will grow or stuck
between wild catnip, you grow nonetheless.
Many times, I have wanted to be you, privy
to the prying tongues of bees,
building layers of buttresses inside a thistle shell
like a cathedral in wartime. At the center:
your heart; a relic, an alter with holy water,
a treasure made from sunshine and pure rain trickle.
I, a bloom, a single heart-clutched hand reaching up,
a landmine field around me the color of bruises:
the beets nursing from the dirt. I, a something to someone.
I, a word that means people live. I,
tempered time, I, a scent that says I am ready
to leave, I am ready to see the ordinary,
I am here to survive. I have nothing in common
with a family with their heads in the ground.
I am ready to mark myself as different. They find nothing
from looking up at the sun, why would they?
Up at the distance between us, up at the color
of sky’s undivided attention, up at the hungry eyes of bees,
up at the benevolent scans of birds searching for seed
while I build my temple that tastes like sugar
at least to someone; while I open my mouth to drink.
