my mother, dedicated to flowers.
and by dedicated I mean she despises flowers with a passion,
a fiery repulsion so strong
that friends and family alike slowly started to mistake it for love
her marriage to my father.
my mother hates my father just as much as she hates his flowers,
she says they are the worst flowers she could ever wish for
and god do I hope those flowers will not make it,
wilting away in the palest beam of sunlight
it is the worst torture that could ever be bestowed upon such beautiful creatures
to live and to grow and to blossom
cut away from their roots
dried and whithered and frail
but my mother, my mother, she grows her flowers with uncanny care
fuelled by voluptuous rage and blind regret
some people still say it’s love
as the flowers shrink away into their own seeds.
so the flowers will surely survive
they’ll survive and they will live to see another day
day by day, night by night
in a place that is so loveless
one might mistake it for lovefull.

my sister, dedicated to flowers.
my sister, a lovely florist
a full-blown head in the clouds heart on her sleeves florist
and by florist I mean my sister values all her flowers so much
she sells them away to whoever might pay back just enough
for them not to feel as worthless as her father’s flowers
which her mother always reminds her about
so she just sells them to whoever.
she tells me her flowers are cute when they treat her to dinner
beautiful when they mend for her tremendous rent, you know?
life is never easy
but her flowers are only majestic, she says, when they are made into presents
cut and pressed and shriveled into tiny scattered pieces so sublime
they attract all kinds of unwanted attention
which reminds her a bit of herself, she says
gifted only to those who will never know how to properly care for something so broken
one might mistake it for whole.

my grandmother, dedicated to flowers.
except she never truly was
willing to take care of something that is fated to wilt away, that is.
my grandmother didn’t despise her flowers like my mother does
she understood them – felt them even
and therefore knew not how to take pity
with thorns of self-loathing
she molded herself into becoming one of her flowers
the only way she knew how to love herself.
my grandma knew how to make wondrous dresses out of petals and leaves
a disguise so colorful and blinding
one might just forget to look at all the right places
you’d have found nothing but pesticide.
grandma’s flowers were the most stubborn
born on a desert island of broken promises and scraped knees
where they were buried too
when the time to hide away the corpses left in her wake finally came.
sometimes I wish she had not left her son’s flowers to rot
coloring them so violent
one - such as his daughters - might mistake it for gentle.

I, dedicated to flowers.
I, anxiety ridden daughter of all flooded fields
blooming in the crevices and rocks dandelion -
I learned to resent the flowers that were  entrusted to me at birth
the detested gift of lifetimes of pain
as if that could ever be just enough to mend
for the moths and worms that made a home out of my belly
I was born with no flowers of my own
no illusion as to what i 'd have to expect from life
my mother’s, my sister’s, my grandmother’s
and my father’s too
my garden is the fullest
and the most painful to care for
kneeling on the seeds with sand in my eyes
no gloves to fend away the thorns
the pesticide fills my lungs
nobody cared enough to ask me
but I never liked gardening.