We were born with a flood and the town welcomed us in: everyone's arms strung in an endless blanket. I looked up at my mother, remembering when she was my shelter.
I had heard the beating; it was rough, it was heavy, real somehow. But it was not life. She lost so much of me during the birth.
I grew up on weekdays, never the weekends, those were a haze. My body stretched but followed the form of the flowers, stooped and wilting in the fall.
Summer was too thick, the air, the trees were luscious but painful to look at. Winter was a noose around my neck, I felt each snowflake before it fell.
But spring! I was in my element. My leaves unfurled, my petals opened - beauty, in the ****, green flesh, human. You only saw me then. You only wanted to hold me then.
My mother blessed you in a shower of nervous chatter, her way of making you a part of things. But you were always distant, far from here in some tiny glass sphere or cube.
I knew when you stopped calling; it was the end of spring but I hadn't yet begun to bend. But you were always right on time to cut yourself free of me.