a handful of

sunflower seeds

sprinkled into my

empty, drought-filled stomach.



a bumble bee came to

pollinate the

garden that had

implanted itself into my

****-encased lungs,

snaking around my

ribs,

blossoming with

lilies,

daisies,

chrysanthemums and

roses of all hues.



no gardener tends to the

flurry of stems that

wrap around my wrists,

springing up my forearms and

swallowing my bare *******.



the grass grows

through my cheeks,

little pebbles sprinkling and

dancing across my nose and

underneath my eyelids,

dousing themselves in the

river that waters the

grass and

smooths the rocks,

flowing fast with

hot, salty waves.



i hadn't realized until the

flutter burned that

a sparrow had

lodged its way into my

heart,



banging against my

aorta-colored birdcage with

anger and longing to

smell the lilies and

taste the sunflower seeds,

but most of all to



unstick itself from

under my sewage-filled tongue,

away from the

pesticide white teeth,

to shoot out from

behind my dirt-encrusted

lips and break free of the

earth-churned stink of my

breath.



the sparrow and my

seed-filled stomach, watching you and

wishing as he sat

trapped inside my heart -

slamming;

spinning;

cracking;

aching -

that he could



swarm into the

breathened blue sky;

pour out from my

weeded lungs and

sickly stomach, and



spread his word-washed

wings,

painted with the

colors of the flowers that

we

had once planted together from the

sunflower seeds that

gutted him;



his own garden growing but

cutting off as he

spiraled under the

tepid spring sun;



dreaming.



just wishing,

suffocating,

swimming through

tubes and veins,

doused in

thick blood until he was

weighed down,

dragging,

drowsy from the

weight of the world that

seemed to rest on his soft,

minuscule shoulders.



red blood cells seeming to

win over the war that

raged in my body,

closing in on the

sparrow,

coaxing him away from the

delicious seeds and the

pleasure-filled garden until he



broke free at last,



leaving my body to

crumble into the soil as

the sparrow discovered something

much more desirable:



your heart,

and



together,

my sparrow beat

right alongside with

your robin,



swimming away from the

seeds and setting eyes on

what he truly wanted:



a field of sunflowers.