Can I bleed on you this spring?

Spring is a time of change—of new life and daffodils blooming. Of warmth emanating through the chloroplasts of flowers just getting past the bulb stage.

I am a bulb. Underground and cold from winter—ready to be breathed into. Inhale, Exhale. Warm me up. Get my blood flowing.

Let me let you give me kisses with new life. Let me let you touch me—your eager hands. Inhale, exhale—I feel blood running through my veins.

Broken bulb breaking through to breathe in sunlight. Inhale.

It flows, I exhale, I bleed. I blossom.

Dew drops dripping and streaming from the core of my carpel. Rushing between sepal and petal. Inhale—support me as I bleed?

Prop up my thin and growing stem with fingertips as steady as you hold my ribcage—still, still—when I hesitate, when I let you see the blood?

Don’t Exhale, don’t cut me with shears so I can stay perfect and place me in a pretty vase with water from your tap.

Don’t Inhale, gaze for a moment, and set me down on your kitchen table. Kept in bloom for a day, cut from the core.

Exhale—stop my imagination, let me trust you.

Inhale—don’t let me dry up. Hold me as I bleed. My blood is sacred and beautiful, that of nature herself.

I want to grow my roots deeper and my petal to bloom in full. I want to blossom and have the wind of spring take pollen to drift across cornfields and plant in fields far away.

To exhale in whispering my demise when nature is ready.

To honor the divine wheel flowing with my blood, your breathe, the warm air of spring.

Love elephant and want to go steady?

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Editor: Bryonie Wise

Photo: Courtesy of Clint Hudson (Pixoto)