Flower Bed

You picked me from a garden of weeds. If you can remember that far back, I was the only one who wasn't a weed in that particular garden. That's why you chose me, remember? At first, you just looked at me in a vase on your windowsill. Then you used me as a link in the garland of flowers in your hair. That's when you began to love me. But, winter came and the wind blew me out of your locks. I hadn't blown far yet, but you neglected to find beauty in me anymore. You plucked me up only to leave me without roots to stand on or even weeds to keep me company. I started to wilt. Another lover sent for me and I mailed myself in a box that flew to Chicago, the origin of my seeds. I thought of you there. You missed me despite my fragility and dying leaves. You were the only gardener that saw and understood the way my colors shone in the sun and light of the moon. The sun didn't shine much in Chicago. I was replanted, but never grew there, and you knew that, too. You followed me there only to find a weed prettier than me. This weed grew off the sidewalk of your beaten bicycle path and you couldn't control him. But, I was there in your backyard's garden when you needed me. There were times when you'd pull me out of the soil and we'd share a moment together. You'd delicately run my petals along the edge of your lips while you fingered my stem, but it was only to drop me back into my flower bed again.

Kalpana

She wanted to learn and she wanted me to teach her. She wanted to learn when the sun wasn't so hot and her stomach wasn't so full. "I'm coming, didi," she said when really she was leaving. I sat at our desk. She craved attention. She'd exit your presence for it. She knew I'd chase her if she waited long enough. She begged for the touch of another. Like a cat, she couldn't help but press her head upon your hands and feet when she wanted you. She escaped to the bathroom and never came back. I left our desk to find her because she waited long enough entranced in thoughts of possible seekers. Not so unlike me, myself, and I watched her in the kitchen from across the tiled courtyard. Her right and then left brain were burning from the touch she desperately received from her surrogate mother. These senile, surrogate role models molding her face with their hands. Attempting to forcibly beautify her to make up for their own ugliness. And my hands were forgotten. Those that preferred to show her how to sculpt herself instead. Although she yearned for our hands, they all looked the same to her that close. I had to accept that despite the innocence of my hands, they'd been seen as other hands, those hands in motion to aggressively control her. My real hands were amputated and she and I were powerless together.