This feeling is getting your breath caught in
your chest so you feel like your lungs aren’t filling with air, but instead, with botany.
It’s your heart beating harder through the petals that have been put there. It’s your hands
shaking because of their roots taking hold
in your nerves, your muscles, your bones. It’s feeling the vines creep up your throat until they spill out of your mouth; spilling, spilling, never stopping for one minute.
Those blossoms are overwhelming, and
enchanting, and desperate, somehow;
if a flower can be said to be pleading
for the affection it so longs to receive.
One person can plant a garden in you that
will drown and consume you.
One person can coax Queen Anne’s lace
out of your veins; amaryllis out of your eyes; honeysuckle from your hair; larkspur from
your fingertips; hydrangeas from your palms; and roses from your heart.
One person can make you bloom.