Adeline and the Dandelions
Through blue-black asphalt cracks rose red to green, topped with a head of sunny yellow. Pale hands came down like mechanized claws, plucking them out by heads or stems or roots and all. Left to die in navy pockets or thrown into the air like confetti, the blacktop looked like a dandelion massacre once the recess bell had rung.
But through the chaos crouched down Adeline, with hands the color of the richest soil and palms the color of roots. With careful fingers she beckoned them out by root and brushed their tops with loving fingertips. With a voice like a summer breeze she whispered to them, and with bent stems they leaned forward to listen.
We grew too old for these silly games, but Adeline never did. She sat with legs carefully tucked under her like roots leafing through pages of a book poised gracefully in hand. With hair the color of humus she looked radiant as the sun with the little heads of her flower peaking out from braided strands.
And while we worried of bullies, work, and numbers, Adeline never seemed to care. She sat by clusters of the dandelions, pencil tip touching just barely to fresh paper. Her fingers poised with thought, as though every stroke was to be considered carefully. We never saw what she could do, we were all invested with our own activities.
With dirtied dress and a slight limp, she walked along smelling of those weeds. Bruises blossomed like pansies across her soil skin. Her eyes as sincere as forget-me-nots, she ruled her unconsidered kingdom with a crown of yellow lions. Our world was racked with the failure of low numbers, the bloody wounds of knives in our turned backs, but she stood planted firmly in the earth as the rest of the drama whirled by. She was as tiny as a bluet, whose light was blocked by pansies. Then she was gone.
Adeline, lit as sweetly as honeysuckle and eyes like speckled trees, walked through her heavenly garden where they grew as flowers and never weeds. With arms drifting gracefully at her side like the branches of a willow, she walked carefully from the clutches of her pain. And all around her they grew, heads as fluffy and white as angels, dancing calmly all around her.
आप पढ़ रहे हैं
In The Eye
कविताSort of like a portfolio, sort of like an autobiography, sort of like a book of poetry and short stories. Well, actually it's all of those things.
