my love for you is a weed

whose seed you planted
with your words

it blooms mysteriously
without the light of your smile
or the warmth of your embrace
in the curious fecundity
of my fallow heart

perhaps it was not planted at all
but sent carelessly to me
by some haphazard wind
of sentiment
yet it thrives
it defies the orderly redundancy
of gardens
and it resists reason
as though it were a feeble herbicide

and its roots crowd out
the possibility of any other blooming thing,
any other love
it is a selfish dandelion
that can’t abide marigolds
it is a savage thistle strangling tiger lilies

my love for you is a weed
neither one of us can uproot it
and though you never tend it,
still it has the audacity to live

Now you must reap what you’ve sown:

touch the petals of the dreams
you’ve planted in me
and beware the thorns

©1999 Tiffany Gholar