Royalty
Purple
When
the others whisper about the past,
they
remind me I am nothing but a weed.
From
where we’ve spread,
I
can almost see the old garden
filled
with flowers
and
the most ethereal are
the purple tulips
toad lilies
meadow rue
lilac and
violets.
I am younger than the
other weeds
and I do not understand
why we are chopped down
stepped on
not treated with the care
the flowers receive.
We are the same color,
why can’t we be treated
with the same care?
They say we are
pushed out because we wanted to spread,
that we thought if there were more of us,
one day we might
also be treated with love.
But our roots
spread too far,
and now none of
us reach even the edges of the garden.
Every year, the
roots are all that remain,
chopped down to
return again the next year.
We prepare for the day
that the roaring
and chopping
and cutting
and chattering
of the weed eater
tears us apart again.
But this time, the roaring doesn’t come.
All
we see is a shadow,
a tall, human shadow,
and
then a pale hand and a kind face.
“You’re
pretty,”
she
says.
Her
voice is light,
tinkling
like a small bell,
and
in her bright smile we know
that
finally someone sees us
as
more than a mass of
weeds.
