SheThey
White Burnout
By Peyton Ordner Flowers next to my bed are short, thick A slow but deliberate ascension rejoicing in all the love the sun has to pour Even deprived of rays and juice, they appear taller than they are Petals begging to touch the clouds and resilient trunks born of sparkling dirt so dark it had no choice but to love itself into becoming grown All its relatives teach it that competition is a death sentence Coevolution is the fertilizer on which it heals and multiplies. In this bed here, we tower boast roar our lanky limbs Watchkeepers of all the garden’s beds Distance visible but depth unfelt We’ve spurt too fast, and on what healthy foundations? Tall and withered we King ourselves though our genetic structure has no trace of words like community, solidarity, love A selfish purpose to sprout tallest by stealing my neighbors light This soil is poison snaking and curling up my weeping stem. My neighbor asks why I must rob the Kingdom of its height in order to feel tall The roots of by own bed, they lack resilience Ancestors ignorant to coevolution and interdependence Only wisdom was that of forgetting the venom in my genes Getting to complain about my height despite having stolen it all We will not last like this. Cut me off at the root and plant me again In a new bed, let us find a confident pace. 20
