You glow
Your radiated purple hue
Just touching you multiplies my atoms
Just touching your pedal is cancerous

I grew you in a chemical spill
I watered you every day
With my dappling of sunshine
I hoped to elevate your foliage

You kept reaching out
You reached for more nature
Until your sickly festered roots
Tore you in another direction

You grew towards a reactor
Beyond the need for gardening
You grew towards the processing plant
Beyond the dappling of sunshine

You keep growing and growing
But you won't grow anywhere
But further into your toxic
Pedals never face the sunshine

All you want is clean rain you say
All you want is some sun
All you do is lay there in the waste
All you do is wait for it to be done

All you do is grow mutant fruit
All you do is grow your thorns
I'm trying to live in the sunlight here
While a new gardener collects your scorn

I threw fertilizer over toxic waste
I gave it some fresh new earth
I planted roses in your place
I allowed my garden rebirth

The roses are coming in just fine
I'll expect them still next June
They grow towards sunlight every day
They're my positive giving negative prune

I hope you like to wasteland
I hope you like the sun at your back
I'll keep growing my Fresh Roses
I can't grow your Toxic Lilac

Salt.
Running from my eyes and my nose.
Salt.
Flowing down a stream of my woes.
Salt.
Touching my lips, burning my irises
Drying and cracking
My face.
A too-familiar taste.
Salt.

Brown and furry
Caterpillar in a hurry,
Take your walk
To the shady leaf, or stalk,
Or what not,
Which may be the chosen spot.
No toad spy you,
Hovering bird of prey pass by you;
Spin and die,
To live again a butterfly.

I wonder* if he wonders about all the little things that make up me.
I wonder if he wonders about the sound of my voice when I sing, the look on my face when I sleep, and the twinkle that will spark in my eyes when he looks upon me.

I wonder if he wonders about the type of woman I will be.
I wonder if he wonders about the things that I value, the ones who are of importance in my eyes, and the ways that I love in a way entirely unique to me.  

I wonder if he wonders about the looks that hold the soul that is me.
I wonder if he wonders about the curve of my lips, the shape of my hands, the color of my iris, and the clothes I wear to dress the body to hold the soul that is me.

I wonder if he loves me,
Now, even before the concept of “us” has come to be.
I wonder if he wonders if I love him.
And I want him to know that I do.
And that I am waiting for him, the one who is waiting for me, and hoping for him, while hoping that he too hopes for me.

"there is a type of jellyfish that lives forever," you once told me.
and i found myself wishing that we could be those jellyfish,
so we can float on these waves
for the rest of our days
and these spindly legs of ours will always stay intertwined.