her mother planted her on a bed of flowers,

warning bees would try to sting.

they would come, she repeated, stingers and all, hunger burning in their beady eyes.

she blossomed into the most beautiful garden, her dirt the most fertile.

they began planting weeds but it never mattered how many times she pulled them out, they’d always find ways to grow back.

her angels turned to demons, glazing her with poison, tying red bows around her wrists.

screams awaken her, she’s not surprised to find they are her own.

the sheets suffocate and the stitching begins to rip, piercing through her silky porcelain skin.

the air’s perfumed with the stench of bitter alcohol,

he consumes it by the bucket.

where is the oxygen?

she needs it to breathe.

her cries shout out to oblivion begs it to stop,

but his dry lips carve through her without hesitation.

he never bothers putting vaseline on them.

he pulls her body into hers with such great force she begins to cry out and in response he pulls roughly on her hair as if the sound of her in pain made the sin more enjoyable.

where have the flowers gone?

all the petals fell off.

her pollen attracts too many,

she can’t produce it fast enough.

her fingers are lacing together like bows forming fists, which no one seems intimidated by,

they don’t listen.

they dip into her like ink,

leaving black stains on her cheeks and red velvet cascading from her legs and wrists as she desperately tries to cut off the parts his hands touched.

the tissues will soon run out and who will console her?

we all stare at the ground in pity and despair while she and many others stand in the middle of our crowded world,

screaming at the top of their lungs yet no one bothers to look up.

selfish fools,

don’t you know flowers can’t grow without sunshine?

there is no more honey left to sweeten yourselves with.