I pick apart the marigolds petals in my hands
wishing for way back then.

Why did you leave me?
When our future looked so bright together.

The garden wilts everyday.
The thorns overgrow on the cliff we used to sit on.

We had forever
Why did you leave me here.

When the day passes noon
There is only silence to keep me company

Your shadow still overcasts the empty spot to my left
Your eyes still tear through the running creek water.

The sun has never been the same
I thought we would get through this together.

Now I am here, overgrown, exhausted, and desperate
This garden will burn along with me.

I sit in the same cliff, letting the crackling of the flames keep me company with its twisted disharmony.
I pick apart the marigold in my hands.

At least its not silent anymore.

-Kore

In Summer,
Our love was set ablaze
Like the marigolds,
Red and yellow all throughout.

As if the Sun kissed a flower,
The embodiment of our fire--
It would grow until it burned out.

Skin, soft and fragile as marigold petals
Bones thin as papier-mâché
Holding the shape of a person I love
Holding together our bodies of clay

Candles, dimming light behind the eyes
Weary wind slipping through parched lips
Sweet and weak the voice of a person I love
Spirit readying voyage on vanishing ships

Marigold, southern roses
in my backyard
there she poses
Camellia, there we dine
red lights, red wine
red tequila
Marigold, flat-pressed roses,
that memory, it’s the tenet
of my broken-ness.

The Sun is mellow

Vibrant  orange marigolds

Pleasant winter days

I started my garden with a little patch of marigolds I got from the market down the street. They were pretty, I guess. I really only chose them because there was the easiest option, since they were already grown and all I had to do was stick them in the dirt and look at them. I walked passed them most days without a second glance.

She was ugly.
A snake of a girl- beady
blue eyes and
blood-red toenails.

The small snigger creeping
up through her perfectly
kept teeth as she spat
at the garbage
of the street: the creatures
she couldn’t see
through her beady
blue eyes.

Her mama would dress her
up in yellow ribbons and green bows.
“Why honey,
you make a sweet little
dandelion,”.

She liked to be
a dandelion, but secretly
she dreamed of being
a marigold:
                                                                ­                       Lips parted to the sun,
                                                                ­                                       seeds planted
                                                         ­                        in the rich soil of her own
                                                                ­                                             blackness.
She wanted to be a marigold.
But she was just
a dandelion,
stepping on petals and
weeding out whatever
she longed to be.