This Is How To Grow When No One Thinks You Can Bloom

Bring your flowers with you.
Keep them sticking out from
underneath your jeans,
let them reach from your waistband,
with their bodies pressed against
yours until you are a fossil of them,
if even for only a moment.
Show them how it blooms from you.
Answer the question before they ask it:
“Can you believe the howl of a thing if it has
not yet been picked dry?”
That is to say:
“Do you imagine when you are alone
that soft things have empty voices?”
Let your body, stuffed full of
unashamed life,
grow so hard
they have no choice but to
press their foreheads against yours,
and repeat it,
“You blossom;
You Do,
You Do.”