I received a beautiful flower today

and put it in the window,

for it to bathe in the sunlight and

wait for the rain.

It wilted.

It stood still a moment so that I could see it sway.

Its body held steadfast and melancholic,

and the petals laid aghast, weary, and cadaverous.

The flower itself looked like a young child,

whose ears had listened to the heartbroken voices of their parents,

a new spirit already bent, doomed, still yet uncertain,

as if its first morning had also been its last.

Her petals hung around her waist,

the pink silk laying lopsided on the stem, ruffled.

The reflection of the clouds imposed on her belly,

casted onto my own chest.

I look at her, astonished of her beauty, but perplexed

by the nature of her own spirit.

I questioned her vulnerability and her truth, as

it felt like she had tried to reassure me, by her coming,

of the broken promises,

alas her thorns said otherwise,

and her salmon petticoat sheltered her true olive-green body.

I studied her movement with every gust of wind,

to see if she had recognized the brisk kiss,

or if it had felt differently from when she had been in the fields,

unbothered and surrounded by other flowers her size,

synchronized in the movement with each breath,

their balletic petals holding hands with the sunbeams,

before being ripped from their earthy home,

and thrown into a foreign place where it is frigid and florescent.

The flower’s strong veins–

–you could call them veins,

had been tattered as every root seized from the safety of mother nature’s nursery,

with hope of a new start and being gullible enough to think it so. Instead,

being tossed into my arms, where I cannot supply the nutrients to be pumped into its delicate heart.

And it lay there,

wishing once more to feel any semblance of feeling grounded.

The flower stayed ***** long enough for me to enjoy its beauty, be charmed by its hope and solitude,

but also watch as each of its petals curl and begin to flinch for,

each gust of wind brings a new danger to its well-being.

And then I will keep it so I may watch it forever,

remembering the way that it was, but also the way it could have been if it had been left

untouched by unkept hands.

And I felt the flower, if not alive in the beauty that the world brings,

then alive earthy tones of a leather-bound book,

that too had once held hands with the sunlight and felt the nip kisses of the wind.

And I let it live.