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“I am a flower”
The creature chants again, and again, and again.
“I am a flower”
These syllables like planting a garden,
not for anyone listening, but to grow something for themselves instead.
To make the words take root.
“I am a flower”
They need to know they can come from a land whose soil is rich enough to let them grow.
They need to know they came from soil dark enough to split them open,
that turned seed-casing to stem > to bud > to petals spread wide
like a mouth saying yes to everything burning overhead.
“I am a flower”
Someone reached for them once. Pulled until the roots tore.
Held them up to their own face, counting, plucked and held with dreams to be loved,
“They loved me, they loved me not”
And, oh, they were loved.
“I am a flower”
This flower shoved through rusted wire and clay,
through choking vines that loved the only way they knew how:
by wrapping tight. By never letting go, a rough life, a loved life.
“I am a flower”
This flower bloomed just for us.
Fighting through fields of thickets and brush,
just to see that a rough life is a loved life, is enough.
Above all, a flower is just a flower –
dumb and brief and easy to crush, it’s the creature that makes it more.
It’s the dream that things could be called different,
the decision to call breaking open growth,
that being pulled apart by light is called blooming.
So, when you need a reminder,
when you need the words to take root, chant yourself this:
“I am a wildflower, and blooming is what I promise”.