Nature

Men Are Insects. Women Are Flowers. (Part I)

Men are insects. Women are flowers.

At dawn the garden starts its little trade;

black bodies dance through chalices for sugar,

and stems turn their faces to be chosen,

(ahhh desire, an evidence of worth.)

Nobody sees the labor underneath.

A root blind from wrestling with stone;

the stem performing its posture for the daylight,

each petal keeping ruin at its edges.

Beauty, so exhausting when it’s compulsory.

Women learn early what the garden needs:

stay lovely and somebody will bring water.

Stand straight enough, and hands will clear the weeds.

She blooms believing believing attraction is care,

until the first brown gathers at her hem.

The insect has the luxury of leaving.

His wings make hunger eat the freedom;

meanwhile, her ankles vanish into the earth

while carries yellow signs elsewhere,

still fed by what he flew from.

Sooner or later every flower bends.

Heat worries through the velvet of her face;

one loosened petal buckles from its bind.

The garden turns its bright eyes elsewhere,

although her roots are ever so ravenous.

We praise the flower standing alone,

call her strong when nobody brings light.

Somewhere beneath the praise, she thirsts.

No living thing was made to earn its tending,

nor beauty meant to function as a ransom.

Beneath us, roots are kissing in the dark.

The bee goes hungry when the flowers vanish.

Dear garden dying in pieces, somehow singly.

Whatever tenderness failed to give

returns eventually as barren ground.

Marni Fraser

0903.2026

XII P.M.

Marni Fraser

0903.2026

XII P.M.

IMG|09.2026