Graphic by Blake Weyland
Planted too early or maybe too late a seedling forgotten in the shadow of my ancestral home. Fertilized with Round-Up and cigarette ash, I did prevail. Left rooted in place, as that building crumbled allowing me to see more than I had ever known. When the winter of my adolescence melted from my strangled leaves, that glorious sun warmed my limbs and my shoots grew without inhibition, without any doubt. Given room to grow, room to thrive. How was I to know that these roots, Unnourished, unknowing of any loving soil, could never reach the heights I now knew? And, as the seasons did shift again, ambition could not be supported by my withered roots. Left to die in winter’s cruel embrace, Left to rot in the smile of the sun.