delicate
and you hold their porcelain home in your palm
and the thick glass warms to the touch.
and the life arcs beneath your fingers,
that soil that scars
and roots that crawl
from their enclosures and stretch
into open air, searching,
searching—
and those
Petals, like hope,
thin enough to see veins—
fragile and shimmering
and translucent and strong.
Roots, pale like frost.
Packed earth, and
New bulbs, on the verge of blooming,
bursting forth
slowly and suddenly.
the grains of dirt crumble beneath
your probing fingers, between
knotted Roots—
dry, like an endless Desert.
vast and empty and full
like so many lives.
and so the flowers
sprout like Desert Blossoms,
low and winding and rough.
the leaves are stiff and
they scrape softly across your skin.
they smell like Dust
and feel like Waiting.
like the promise of rainfall.
you bury your fingers in hot sand,
and believe in things invisible.
change slow enough to kill,
and those strong enough to wait for it—
strong enough to fight for it.
Desert Blossoms
which dare to live
in a world which abhors them.
nevertheless, surviving—
through history,
and persistence.
despite—
brittle ground
and cracked Foundations,
Weaving roots like twine or .
drying Pools which
heat and arc and shimmer
beneath the ancient weight
of a distance Sun.
Yet, remain—
woven in air
dripping from cracks.
caves encased in earth—
cracked walls,
slick with forbidden substance.
aching softly
—feeding old life.