Punctuation

Carnations

I am a yellow carnation and maybe I am pretty. 

While my color reminds you of the sun and a smile, I will never be a white carnation. 

She is a white carnation and she is the world's interpretation of magnificence.

They find her through finding me. 

And when paired with the white carnation, I spoil the sight of her grace. 

She is pure and she is true love. She is who they want. 

She is the picture they like, the one they are determined to find. 

I am aged in constant rejection.

With my tawny petals, I offend those who admire her.

I am the flower they see first and yet they choose her. 

I guess it's just that a white carnation suits every occasion. 

I am by the door, I meet the hands half way. 

Hands on the red ones, on the pinks, on the white carnations. Hands finding even the stems of purple carnations. 

But no one chooses me. 

I am still plucked in quantities so that these hands can find the more desirable of all the carnations, 

and so that then they can compare the purity of this white carnation to my own tainted appearance. 

I am still a last resort when the white carnation's concentration is elsewhere. 

I am chosen in disdain and with much hesitation. 

I am a yellow carnation and although I am bright like the sun and I smile a lot, I will always be fighting a losing battle against the white carnation's popularity and elegance. 

I have spent some time trying to hide, severing my petals from their very roots until I am nothing but a stem and straggling leaves. 

Truth is, there's no means of me being the first choice, being the purest form of beauty a man can find.

Truth is, no amount of paining myself, changing myself, hiding myself will make them find me more appealing or more attractive than they find her to be. 

Such is life. 

Such is my life; the life of a yellow carnation. 

The life that is never chosen.