You pick up a dandy lion like a small-slit-prayer, and I watch you close your eyes.
It's warm out but you still wear your sleeves long like a subtle rebellion,
Yet all I see is that flower, and the pressed paleness in your finger tips
As you inhale.
It only took you a moment, like the words were already there before you spoke them,
Before you even bothered to look: all you needed was to close your eyes,
And breathe in to find them.
(Words I will never hear:
Delicate ellipses of closed eyes breathing in,
And opening; exhaling prayers out.)
But they ring in your smile.
"Immolate to what cause?" I ask, and you make that face filled with annoyance,
Because I've done it again.
(Promise, though, it's not intentional.)
"You don't always have to use big words with me,"
But then you smile back and tell me it's not sacrifice: "It's flower petals
For the wind,"
And I hear the glitter in your voice.
"It's the tip-toes from wishes, I'm letting them drip:
I'm helping them dance."
And I tell you with my eyes that your full of ****,
But you're just watching those tip-toes DISCO.
One day I ask you what it is you always wish for:
You see, by now, flowers reference you in fear,
But you just sigh saying you couldn't tell me.
You start saying something about carving out a blank slate,
But then the idea mumbles over and you're back on talking about your day.
We're out late somewhere, it's a June night, and summer is starting to sink in.
"Does that sweater keep you warm enough?" I say it mockingly a bit,
as I recline into the hill we're sitting on, and look at my bear arms,
And the tank top hardly covering my torso.
We laugh, through the stale humor we've come accustom to,
And you roll your eyes a bit,
But I can see the depth you're trying to cover-
I don't have to wonder much to know how deep it goes.
"What's it like always being that cold?"
And you lie back into the grass too
Not quite looking at much of anything.
"It's like having a field full of dandelions and nothing to wish for, "
You say in an exhale, and wondering eyes ,
"Like your still habitually searching for them."
And I can't see the glitter in you,
But I can still hear it in your voice,
And I understand that you're just trying to keep yourself wrapped up,
Because further down there's more than empty air pushing on dandelions,
But I don't know if you can believe that.
You see I've wanted to tell you how ironic those flowers are to me.
How I used to see you breathing out wishes into them,
And dropping the stems along with all your other small-slit-battles
That went unseen.
But now I'm glad I kept my mouth shut.
"But if you could, you know, wish on a dandelion, would it be worth it?"
And you smile, with a laughter that's fresh this time,
Because you see that I might get it now,
"I think dandelions are ugly-
But I pick them in habit, there's something comforting about knowing they're there."
I ask you to take your sweater off,
Because, honestly, just looking at it is making me hot,
And you smiled like the request meant nothing but a joke.
So I left it in the air, like those small-slit-prayers,
And I hoped it'd cut through to something else this time.
"There's more to those dandelions than giving them to the wind you know."
And you look out into the field seeing them all.
"One day, there won't be a single one left,"
"Or one day I'll be warm."
I want to find the right way to tell you that your small-slit-prayers
Were landing wishes in ways you did not know,
But you got in an argument last week,
And it was too much of a struggle for you to see that they're still flowers,
So let them dance across your skin,
And wear those petals like power.
There's moments to let in,
So tell me wishes for them to devour.