The day she put her pursed, puckered mouth to my chapped lips and spoke so softly between each sacchariferous peck, she whispered, “ What a joy for me to find such a demolished, scummy soul”. I glanced away from her chocolate bar eyes long enough for my vision to settle on the sunset over looking the telephone wires. She locked her fingers to mine in a way of such ascendancy. “ Like the flowers on your mother’s grave though, some love, water, and care and you will be beautiful “.

We sat with the people you associated yourself with everyday at lunch. You talked with such a bureaucratic tone that I swear I saw even your friends quiver. You had a certain way to zone people. You sold the idea that you cared for them and by listening to everything you said would make them feel crucial and relevant. You slid your hand up my thigh and nudged me because I was not paying attention to what the topic was. “Huh”? I cried. “ My poor baby. Not use to such attention and prosperity. Making him feel special isn't all that easy, especially when he drifts off but nothing wrong with a fix it upper” you grinned before placing a bleak kiss on my left cheek.

I soon learned to talk to your friends like they were mine and even fool myself to believe I cared about what came out of my mouth. The words I spoke were not my own though, they were reprocessed seeds you fed me weeks before. One of your friends took me aside that Thursday afternoon and just looked at me with a face full of apprehension. I went to speak and all that came out were deceased bulbs. She took one look at me and could see the drip of woe they left on my lip.

I should have known you weren’t good for me and that I wasn’t something special to you. I was another plant you tried to put in a pot and onto your shelf. You told me I could be beautiful like the other flowers that you have grown before but you picked flowers and ripped off the pedals in hopes of love from someone else who wasn’t me or from anyone before me. You stepped on the small sprouts that sprung out of the dirt every spring then proceeded to call them tragedies. You then filled the weaken part of us with your perjury. Like you can grow a garden with acid and a flashlight.

I now have new soil and original seeds in me. I am not like the flowers my father planted on my mother’s grave. I am not the store bought, dozen stemmed roses. I had to uproot and restart because your lips were shears and you mistook me for weeds.