Disorder

This is a sestina.

Hummingbirds buzz outside my window
Eager for a chance at my garden.
Watching them curiously, I shrug.
I hold up my palm and close a fist,
Examining it I wonder how beauty could get so small.
If I could shrink, could I be beautiful as well?

Tossing pennies into the bottom of a well,
Water ripples less a mirror, more a window.
Wishes gather losing meaning, insignificant and small.
The copper reef begins to resemble my garden.
Vexed at this brown mockery, I crumple a fist.
Dropping the bag of metal, I shrug.

What more is there to say in a shrug
But imperfect shoulder blades, not well-
Aligned with faulty collarbones, like a fist
I tighten my stomach into a window
Exposing ribs so defined, I am a garden
Of starvation if only my figure were small.

When I was younger, I never yearned to be small.
But it was at the age I learned to shrug
That I was taught to become a garden.
Not in the way that it bloomed, but by how well
It shrunk in the winter, just dirt outside a window,
The flowers always retreat into fists.

My body is a fist
That was never meant to be small.
I decided to live my life as a window
Of love rather than an uncertain shrug.
My life had been centered in the bottom of a well
Drowning beneath a copper garden.

The hummingbirds don't come around the garden
When the flowers close into fists.
They wait until it blooms well
Into the Spring, for a garden should not be small,
And I no longer wish to shrug
When I gaze outside my window.

I open my fist, palm outstretched wide, I am not small.
I am the window to my garden, beauty is not seasonal.
I bid well a final shrug as it seeps between my petals.