We live inside a garden

With walls that wade in subtle pigmentation

From nights when rain still fell hard upon our petals.

 

We live inside a garden 

With hydrangeas dripping in a fuschia compote,

Sweet and soft as it slides across one’s tongue. 

 

We live inside a garden

With sunflowers that spew their seeds across the soil

Each time the seasons shift.

 

We live inside a garden 

With morning glories that pop and spin from within a web of saffron, 

Dancing cautiously upon the coattails of Dusk. 

 

We live inside a garden

Where our colors outstand it all—

Tall,

Bright,

Potent.

 

This solstice has tucked itself up under a quilt of gloom,

Hiding behind darkness to shield its deformed light.

Yet,

We live inside a garden where that does not matter.

 

We live inside this garden, and each corner is filled with fine fragrances. 

 

However, along the perimeter of our tenacious terrace

Lays a plant with which we have little to do.

With a serpentine stem that holds wilting petals up to the heavens,

It lost its name far before the dry spell hit these hills. 

 

I knew it once,

Yet its colors fade now behind a cloak of bistre deluge,

Its title but a shadow of my reflection.

 

And while it still calls to me, 

Shallow behind a heartbeat and a refrain,

I know not the face that whispers this plea.

 

I recognize the voice despite the age that encumbers it,

But voices fail us flowers

When our masks decompose into the dry and rotting sod.

 

We live inside a garden

With walls that wade in subtle pigmentation

From nights when rain still fell hard upon our petals.

 

We live inside this garden, 

This garden inside us.