Cute Flower
Reflective white petals with a sunny yellow in the center
On a perfect blue-sky day
Tiny, quavers in the gentle breeze
She lives among its many sisters and distant cousins and the grass
You tower above it
casting a shadow.
Lean down
grab its neck
with the thumb and index finger
choke it
kill it
pluck it from the earth
cradle of mother nature
just like that
it is severed.
With a soft click
the green fibers of the stem are ripped.
Now torture it
by slowly removing each of the petals
one
by
one
mutilate it
until only a bald, ugly, egg-yolk yellow
powder head is left
and the delicate white edge has flown off in the wind.
She loves me not.
(October 2002)