If someone were to ask me which poem I’m most proud of from Sophomore year, it would be this one. I performed it for my Fall 2018 Spoken Arts show, Rights Write. It has gone through countless edits while still maintaining the same mystical, nature-y, nostalgic tone I aimed for. I wrote it about my first close friend in middle school, who was two years older than me and moved away as soon as she graduated. This poem was a way to reminisce on how close we once were, and also acknowledge that we will never be that close again, even if we both try to reach out. But that’s just how life be, I guess.
pollinated in eden
to whom it may concern:
it is hard to write a letter to someone who slipped through my life, leaving only soil under my fingernails.
did your voice bloom into dandelions?
did it stunt into daisies, or become twice as fragrant as roses?
i don’t know what to think of you.
i don’t know what you’ll think of me either.
will i still taste like stars on the roof of your mouth?
will your words cleanse my palette in the way sage cleanses my household?
what’s become of you?
moved away to more fertile soil.
your roots grew through my veins
supplying me with nourishing i didn’t know existed.
i wish i had leeched on for longer.
you tore yourself away too soon
to experience my “in bloom.”
in the way condensation turns to precipitation
turns to evaporation
turns to condensation
i turned upon meeting your cloud formations
it’s a shame that clouds come and go
but rain falls and falls.
connecting again won’t feel the same.
the bees of lands we escaped
bring pollen that makes me sick
rather than sentimental.
your newest words,
new worlds
stunt my thoughts, barricade my photosynthesis.
we are two flowers sprouted in the same nursery
but planted in different gardens.
maybe you don’t think of me at all –
but i know you do.
for someone who used to tell me when you thought of me
all you could see was
green
green eyes
green love
makes me realize when you punctured my soul
i punctured your heart right back.
my growth depended on you,
but my nutrients stopped short.
your sugar levels got too low,
not even fertilizer could help your lost sun
lost vitamins
lost love.
my growth was stained in shades of red –
gardeners with no knowledge of how to take care of me
ruined my roots –
and i had no room to reciprocate your green light.
but maybe you don’t sit and write
metaphoric poetry
with lilies and tulips on paper made out of trees
grown in the garden of eden.
maybe i’m too hung up on lost friendships
the changing of the seasons
and what could have been.
maybe i think too much and write too little
hoping for a response to a letter i’ll never end up sending out.
life has a way of changing any certainty to a maybe
and any maybe to a certainty.
so maybe
this paper from the trees of the garden of eden –
pollinated with the ancestors of the bees accompanying us –
will fold itself into an origami boat
and dissolve in a lake
which will evaporate into the clouds
and precipitate down into your drinking water
where you’ll take a sip of my words
and the water we so often forget
that we need
to survive.
and maybe
if all this happens
you’ll write back
and i’ll receive your response
via the water cycle.
sincerely, yours.
