Sunflowers

John SimmerlingJune 10, 20182 min read

I know why the heart gets lonely

Every time you give your love away

And if you think that you are only

Flowers in the wind

Blowin' round the wind

You let somebody in they might fade away

"It's not me being negative," I explained, in my bro psychoanalysis.

She peers into minds for a living, but I held my ground.

"Maybe they'll have kids. But what they have now, as beautiful as it is, won't last."

I can't remember if I was talking about the Duchess of Suffolk and her new husband or a more mundane coupling.

"You don't know that."

She believes in dreams and poetry and sunflower tattoos.

Like I did.

Their is a certain poetry in the summer Sunflower. A cadmium beauty that's almost gaudy; braggingly tall, proud, and dominant. Sharp against the ultramarine skies, they grow especially strong in late summer.

Young, royal, and always stretching toward the sun.

Then, their sinewy yellow-green stalks get snipped at the peak of their beauty. They're collected and placed into tall tapwatered vases.

They hold on, for a while, still sharing their late summer beauty, sometimes into the fall.

Of course, tapwater isn't enough. It never is. It wasn't last summer, or a hundred summers before that.

As they lose the richness of their beauty, the fading of summer comes with a longing. For brilliant skies and bathing suits and warm rain.

Sometimes, as their petals turn papery, they might still be cherised; pampered and prized as the air chills and the days shorten. They might still whisper of farmer's markets and dandelions and afternoon thunderstorms.

And sometimes, as they dry, their seeds hold the promise of another rich summer.

"Draw me a sunflower tattoo," she suggested.

Hmm, that one might last.

Maybe forever.

sunflowers loneliness love poetry