Of Lilacs & Sunsets (ladybug take 1) // 2.11.2019
The summer you turned five,
you’d spend every sunset where your front yard met Hillview
searching for flowers with your grandmother.
The plants became your confidants,
and by the time school started again, you knew each one by name.
You loved the way gladiolus rolled off your tongue,
and foolishly made wishes on three-leaf clovers,
but what intrigued you most were the lilacs -
dainty purple constellations, tended to by all the women that preceded you.
And though you knew how it would end, every night, you’d try to pick a few
and march back into the kitchen with fistfuls of purple powder,
and a heart full of defeat.
The summer you turned eighteen,
you stood on the lawn at sunset amidst a sea of nervous bodies
and found your gaze locked with a pair of olive eyes.
She moved like the gentle change of the tides,
but you remembered what your own clumsy hands did to delicate flowers,
so you shoved them in your pockets and smiled shyly.
And for every sunset after, you’d watch her snag words out of thin air
and weave them into a breathtaking tapestry of poetry,
lamenting the books you dedicated yourself to for over a decade
that failed to teach you why you got goosebumps whenever she said your name
or when her hand grazed your arm mid-conversation
or how to tell her just that.
So you introduced her to the Ilex opaca and Melospiza melodia,
and you folded your heart into paper birds to slip in her pockets,
and each night you filled your tea with gobs of the honey you once resented
because the sweetness that once stuck in your throat
now you imagine tastes like her smile,
and you’d do anything to collect the fragments of her,
stitch them over the patches of your own soul
that have worn since the summer of lilacs and sunsets
And although you moved away from Hillview years ago,
without a tiny purple souvenir of summertime longing,
you’ve learned how to love beautiful flowers from afar.
dailybridgerton
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