Tonight's Poet Corner: Mother Nature's Daughter

Mother Nature's Daughter
by Belinda Roddie

I made friends with the girl
who grew flowers from her fingertips.
Every day, she'd bequeath a bouquet
to me - the petaled arteries of her
age, each stem a blessing of her own
oxygen and blood.

I felt strange putting the roses
in a vase. They had no thorns, so I
presume she felt like she could let
her guard down around me. Now,
when I write letters to her, I describe
my temperaments in bright red ink.

There is nothing preventing her
from becoming a living garden, each
winding vine bursting out of skin that
heals with every interval. I've checked
her thumbs before, and they exude
a wan, blue veined hue instead of a
soil comfort green. I haven't received

a cluster of her forget-me-nots for
a few months now. Either she has
forgotten me, or she has been rooted
to the same spot behind a busy street,
leaves bristling in the lion's den of
her hair, chlorophyll adding color
to her eyes, a forced and frond-freckled
smile above her endlessly quivering chin.