I WAS A SEEDLING

When we first met I was nothing but an empty landscape.

You made me laugh so deeply that I cried,

and the tears watered a lost garden in my body.

Together we planted marigolds and tall redwood trees.

And so, I became a forest.

You were the keeper of our forest.

Cutting vines, trimming flowers, nurturing roots.

But I stopped laughing and the ground dried up.

One summer a harsh rain came and flooded the forest,

the flowers surrounded my lungs and the vines covered my eyes.

The roots bound my hands leaving me nothing to hold onto,

I was slipping farther into its depths.

Realizing it wasn’t our forest at all,

I was able to let go.

I want to change the attachment humans create.

To love, to the compelling feelings we all long for, to materialistic objects.

I want to become as independent as a lily flower.

In my forest, you were the sun

And I want to become a flower that does not need you to live.

I will prosper in the darkest places,

And relish in the light of day.