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.
