I remember a day
when I was about six…
The day I saw the daffodil.
It was as yellow as a ripe lemon at the edges,
pale, and looking almost bleached,
like my mother’s yellow cleaning rags,
when they were old and faded from ammonia.
It was playing it’s delicate trumpet for the sun,
courting the bees with it’s sugary orange center…
a little world, balanced on a slender green stem.
Fragile enough to be crushed at a stroke,
even by a six year old.
I looked at it real close,
and I saw the softness of the moon-dust
that seemed to coat the bloom in velvet,
and I saw the brightness of the shine
as it reflected the sun at my face like a spot-lamp,
and I smelled the scent, sweet and fresh and new…
an exit to another world.
I had never seen a daffodil before.
There were no flowers where I lived.
Nothing would grow in concrete and filth.
And nobody cared to try.
Who would buy seeds, here?
Who buys paint, or toys, or flowers,
to decorate a pit they have fallen into?
You’re always going to get out tomorrow.
But they never got out, and they never learned,
that if you bought the paint, and the flowers,
perhaps you wouldn’t need to get out.
My mother died without ever having a garden.
She never planted a seed nor tended a shoot.
When I was six, I thought that flowers
were made of crepe paper and foil.
And then I saw the daffodil.
A remnant of a happier time,
one solitary daffodil,
a lone survivor,
still blooming and living,
amidst concrete, and chaos,
and urine stains, and trash,
in the one bright corner of a dark wasteland.
A few days later, it was withered and dead.
It was the first time I really got to see death.
Up close and personal.
I watched it slowly droop,
and dry up, and turn brown,
over the course of three days.
I remember a day
when I was about twelve…
I saw a daffodil.
It was a different daffodil,
in a different place,
further away,
but not too far…
not outside of the circle of filth,
the invisible fence that enclosed us,
a barrier greater than China’s Wall,
unconquerable, unbroachable,
better protected than federal gold,
and yet… not actually there.
I stood in the cool spring warmth,
and I looked at the flower,
and I saw it’s fragile beauty,
it’s defiance of the filth,
it’s willingness to live,
to tolerate this dross…
and I was angry.
And I thought of how that defiance would wither,
how it would crumble away to dust,
and in just a few days,
that face of beauty,
would be just a streak of green scum.
And I was angry.
I snatched at the stem and pulled
it from the ground and crushed it in my hands and shredded the petals into
golden confetti and threw them to the floor and stamped on the remains and
turned them into filth.
I have to tolerate this filthy existence.
The beautiful flower will not have to.
It’s defiance will never have to wither.
I will never have to watch it die slowly.
I remember a day
when I was about sixteen…
I saw a girl.
The first girl I ever thought was truly beautiful.
She had curly blonde hair and a yellow shirt,
and a sunny face in a permanent smile…
even though she lived here,
in this grim garden of destitution.
She was positive. She was defiant.
I looked at her, and I wanted to look so close,
to see the soft velvety bloom on her skin,
to smell her scent, sweet and fresh,
and to escape, and to start anew.
She was a whole world,
a world that teetered in every breeze,
adrift at the end of a long stem.
Hypnotized, I drank her in,
smelling her scent, and admiring her bloom,
feeling the warmth she reflected onto me.
For years, I drank her dry,
intoxicated by her smile and her smell,
living on her defiance,
existing on her will to live.
She was the flower in my wilderness,
in my concrete and chaos.
I remember a day
when I was about twenty five…
I saw a girl.
This girl wasn’t like my girl.
She was withered and brown,
turning to dust, hunched,
drooping and dry, ready to die.
She was wearing a yellow t-shirt.
But it was faded near the top.
She was standing near my front “door”,
polishing the filth with a yellow cloth,
prepared to tolerate this, to try to live,
defying the dirt as it strangled her…
And I was angry.
I thought of my mother’s cleaning rags,
old and threadbare, yellow, with big faded patches,
where the ammonia had thinned the cloth,
and you could see the sunlight through them,
as they dried out in the breeze.
My mother was twenty five, the day I first saw a daffodil.
I remember her hands were red from cleaning,
with bleach and vinegar and wax.
She tried, but she didn’t want me, and she didn’t want her
life.
And I was angry...
I remember a day
when I was about thirty six…
I saw a girl.
She was as beautiful as a flower.
Perfect, and fragile, and joyful, and blooming.
And coming out of another s**t pit.
Another of the parasite dens we call “home”.
Followed by another of our s**t-dwelling weasels.
Six feet six with a gang tattoo,
expensive jeans,
cheap after-shave,
blank expression,
gold jewelry,
stubble.
And I was angry.
I strode right across that street,
and I punched that girl right in the face.
and I knocked her right on her a*s,
right from the blue,
while the muscle-toting weasel,
simply grunted in slack-jawed shock.
As he muscled me away, and the lights went out,
I remember…
stamping on her pretty face.
I remember a day
when I was about fifty…
I saw… my wife’s beautiful face.
Her beautiful face, cradled in my dirty hands,
so peaceful, so perfect, so fragile.
And I loved her more than I had ever loved her.
I needed her more than I had ever needed her.
I admired her more than I had ever admired her.
I remember the sound, such a tiny sound, really,
the sound of her neck snapping as she slept.
I remember a day
when I was about sixty…
I saw a daffodil.
I saw it outside, I could just see it,
at the very edge of the narrow slot of reality,
that the window allowed me.
It was the only flower I could see.
Nodding it’s yellow head in the sunshine,
one flower, in one bright corner of a dark prison yard.
But this time, I was free.
I didn’t need to kill that bloom.
That day was yesterday.
And today, they will kill me.And tomorrow, that daffodil will still be there.
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