Bloom Reckoning

I was fine on the concrete

Learned to breathe through a crack

Didn't need your watering Didn't need your hands on my back

Small yellow bloom

On a dirty wall

You walked by and said "That shouldn't be there at all"

You said

"wild things should be kept"

You said "pretty things should be clipped"

You smiled while you knelt down

Said "this will only hurt a bit"

You pulled me without asking

Fingers in the dirt of me

Called it love, called it gardening Didn't hear me say please don't,

please Not a rose for your vase Not a thing for your

room You didn't grow me You just took my bloom

You call it deflowering

I call it theft

I was wrapping, I was free

Making shade for only me

You didn't like a flower you can't own So you tore me

from my home

Now I'm in your fist

Dripping roots and soil You hold me

up and say "Look what I have spoiled"

And you put me in water

Like that makes it right

A dead thing in a pretty glass And you say "look,

she's mine tonight"

I was alive on the wall

I was happy, I was small

You needed something pretty to kill

To prove you could at all

I WAS NOT YOURS TO PICK I

WAS NOT YOURS TO PULL I

WAS NOT BORN TO WILT IN A ROOM THAT YOU CALL FULL (no)

You can hold the stem

But you don't have the ground

You can take the flower

But you can't keep what you

pulled down

'Cause I left a seed

In the same wall

In the same crack

You didn't see at all

And I'll bloom again

Where you can't reach

That's what wallflowers teach