Charlotte Wakefield

Sunflowers

Charlotte Wakefield

Remember when I kneeled in the dirt and weeded for you in the summer? My knees were dirt-specked and sore, but yours were untouched. I watched you work with unrelenting efficiency somewhere else in the backyard, as if from a distance. Maybe you were in the planters, where you tried to nurture life and half succeeded. Nature was too free for you. Our front yard was bursting with wild sunflowers whose seeds you had sown years ago. You let them grow each year, then dug them out in the fall. Still they grew back. Maybe you let them because they hid the house from the neighbors’ stares. Maybe because they never asked for water like I did; the desert rains were enough for them. I would have lived off rain if I could. Instead, I begged for bread and water. Bread and water you gave me, for a while. You let me grow tall and fragile, then pulled me out. I never returned to that soil.