TOMATO PLANT

Coffee lines my stomach walls as my body screams for more. Please— something more substantial something more sustainable. As the tummy gets bigger the voices get louder. The gurgles, groans, grumbles and grunts— more more more more more Spoilt brat! Temper tantrums won’t get you your way. To teach it a lesson, I’ll pretend I don’t listen. I water my tomato plant, drowning the roots the water is rotting— pour pour pour pour pour

My face distorted by water stains and toothpaste spit. Disgusting— paint my canvas with thick foundation insecurities hidden with a lipstick seal. Push out my chest and suffocate my breasts sinch my waist until my back arcs and breaks— stop stop stop stop stop If I were made of cloth and twine, I could stitch a new perfection a man-made, natural, monstrous beauty. I forgot to water my tomato plant today the leaves are decaying— snip snip snip snip snip

The matriarchal flower barges her way into my life. Leave— she cleans my room she takes out the trash. Her roots sucking my independence. Creeping vine entangling her tendrils around my adulthood— this plant relies on you. She moves it to a window and tries to breathe life into the crusted leaves a mother’s love, warm and kind. She hums to the tomato plant— it’s not your time to die hum hum hum hum hum

Sarah Hurst

I rip off the dead leaves, and claw into the soil. Fertilise. The tomato plant needs me to listen. The tomato plant needs me to live. There’s a tomato sprouting— grow grow grow grow grow it’s not our time to die.