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     He saw me.

     His Red Petals,

     In tune with his Budding,

     Took on the shape of my lips

     As a python would take on an unsuspecting rabbit

     In the heat of an afternoon sun:

     Suddenly. Violently. Breathtakingly.

     Whole.

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     He liked me.

     His Green Leaves

     Embraced my fingers into his Soil,

     Enmeshing them in it, 

     Absorbing the glow

     Of the words my eyes dared to mutter

     As I poured my watering can of delicacy 

     Into his devil’s food cake abyss.

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     He loved me.

     His affectionate fragrance 

     Infatuated the static that played in my brain,

     Faded the tribal drumming in my ears,

     And I sank ever so deeply,

     Drowned ever so willingly,

     Into his dreamy aroma.

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     He loved me.

     His Garden of elegant red that I watered

     Was the Eden in which I so chose to plant my thoughts,

     Dropping seeds of mind 

     One

     Seed

     At

     A

     Time.

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     He loved…

     The days withered into weeks,

     Weeks into months,

     Months into myself like a ticking time bomb in my chest

     Waiting for the right time to let me know

     It’d be all over.

     I waited to hear the truths

     Those tribal drums screamed so passionately

     From behind his floral scented weighted blanket.

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     He loved me not.

     I watched my fingers collaborate with my palms,

     Ignored the agony in my wrist 

     As I lifted the watering can for another session

     With my unrequited lifeline.

     Retched crackling in my crouched knees 

     Filled the void of noise surrounding us

     As I nurtured thorns doused

     In Misconception’ beautiful venom.

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     He hated me so.

     My hand stained the stems of my labor

     With blood and silver moon beams,

     With static and my own being.

     I let it pour onto the garden of red,

     And saw before me nothing but a pricked pool of mirrors

     Smirking up at me with petulance.

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     He would not love.

     The soil that surrounded me rose,

     Pulsating beneath my feet 

     As roots from my newfound foe swirled around below the      

     surface,

     Rejoicing in cruelty as he witnessed me collapse,

     Singing along to the karaoke of my demise,

     Pushing me down the hill when I was falling to begin with.

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     He could not love.

     His bloodshot petals bore into me

     Like a starving dog with bared teeth,

     As his thorns pierce any last ounce of who I was,

     Who I wanted to be.

     Perhaps who I wanted to be was much too tall,

     Much too bright,

     And much too yellow of a flower

     To satisfy this scarlet monstrosity.

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     I hated him so.

     Far away, I tore open a hole, deeper and deeper down it went.

     Dug beyond the rocks and the sand and fossilized critters,

     And planted my corpse in the soft, molded dirt.

     I made a bed out of myself and sprouted,

     My petals taking on the shape of my being.

     I became a delicate savage,

     An unapologetic band-aid

     For my leafy hands

     And my scathed mindset.

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     I was a gardener.

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     I am a gardener.

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     But I garden only myself.

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     He is a rose.

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     And his petals take on the shape of the ground below me.

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     As I snip him apart.

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     By

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