We are of Taraxacum.
A volatile genus in duress.
Our heads disseminate, blown from our stems.
Rash thoughts ignite into words and whirl
On the wind,
Take seed in a flash of tongue and slice of eye.
In the young, loamy soils
We till fears deep.
They spring up from the ground and
Spark into being.
Fractured fragments of the whole,
Born from friction, this contempt consumes.
And it is like a wildfire.
Thick, fiery vines twist and coil.
Flowers, stoked to an angry bloom, blaze and burst,
Throwing open petals wide with the backdraft of odium.
It scorches and scars the skin of the earth.
We are barbaric in this unnatural state.
Hearts sterilized by the heat of hate.
Hearts full of bitter sap and brambled embers.
Roiling smoke stings and blinds us,
Chokes away our empathy.
This fury lashes through our humanity
Until there are only blackened sticks and
Smoking patches of ashy dirt.
The afterglow of spent, searing sentiments
Fade from the carpel.
Here, a pistil of arrogance and one of defeat,
And here, a pistil of disgust
And another of ignorant nostalgia.
Fear singes the last delicate cell walls
In a red, luminescent squall line.
And finally, fully charred,
The spent bloom wilts and crumbles.
But their fire has not left me infertile.
In this crackling, wild prairie,
There is a budding, a delicate anticipation
That the rains of my sorrows will sprout new growth.
I must germinate, cultivate
A bright breath of compassion,
Lest the world around me burn out and
Smolder into cold nothingness.
By: Erica Ruhe
Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com
The Inkblotters 