We were born with a flood
and the town welcomed us in -
everyone's arms strung in an endless blanket.
I looked up at my mother, remembering
when she was my shelter.

I had heard the beating;
it was rough, it was heavy, real
somehow. But it was not life.
She lost so much of me during the birth.

I grew up on weekdays, never the
weekends, those were a haze.
My body stretched but followed the
form of the flowers, stooped and wilting
in the fall.

Summer was too thick, the air, the trees
were luscious but painful to look at.
Winter was a noose around my neck,
I always felt each snowflake before it fell.

But spring! I was in my element.
My leaves unfurled, my petals opened -
beauty, in the nude, green flesh, human.
You only saw me then. You only
wanted to hold me then.

My mother blessed you in a
shower of nervous chatter, her way
of making you a part of things.
But you were always distant, far from here
in some tiny glass sphere or cube.

I knew when you stopped calling; it
was the end of spring but I hadn't
yet begun to bend.
But you were always right on time
to cut yourself free of me.

Now I live with a man of all seasons
and he knows me in every shape,
every form which I have been.
He knows our story, yours and mine,
and he has learned the hard way
how to fit his piece into this puzzle
that somehow creates me as I am.
Still, I must know:
did you?