V.E.
My leaves groan and bend under the weight of the icy dew that drips down from the suspended
frozen fog.
My petals lay below me, chipped and shattered, the color of smoke-stained walls.
Each day I grow skinner; shorter. My color fades to an ashen sage and my stem shrivels and
flakes apart like white paint on an old picket-fence.
I bend, and bend, and bend – my fragile spirit splintering away until my pistil lays along the frigid
ground parallel to my roots.
The soil envelops me like a gentle mother’s arms wrapping around her sick child; it lightly
whispers that my time is up.
I am not afraid, for I know that my slumber will be brief. I will rouse at the start of nature’s
awakening, fresh and naïve.
I will unfurl, up towards the sky, with sunlight kissing my golden petals; I will bloom again.