where are my flowers?

you wake up every morning and go to work. minimum wage jobs don’t ever pay you enough for the stress it gives you. you wake up every morning and go to school. apparently you’re not paying teachers enough to teach you. you wake up every morning and you open your eyes. but you still don’t see things for what they really are. you wake up every morning and you inhale oxygen, wondering when will be the last time. you wake up every morning because the world demands that you do, you wake up. you show up. you show up for everyone. who shows up for you? where are the flowers the earth grows? why haven’t they been handed to you yet? you wake up, isn’t that what counts?

and after years, long overdue, you still haven’t received your flowers. maybe it’s not about waking up, maybe it’s about sleeping less and staying awake more. so you don’t sleep. up all hours working, studying, trying to make sense of where the flowers might grow because they’re nonexistent for you on this earth. religion tells you your flowers may be handed to you in the afterlife. but the people around you get their flowers, where are yours? the world rotates but you are stuck on a pole that doesn’t, watching your peers receive the same flowers you stay up all hours of the night for. where are the flowers?

one day you realize, the flowers grow. you are the flower. the flower is forever growing, you will always grow. you have surpassed thorns and weeds that the earth has thrown at you, you have failed to see yourself as a flower, waiting for another flower to be handed to you. you are the flower, my child. you give yourself more flowers, you grow and sprout leaves and plant roots, you grow other people’s flowers for them.

you are your flowers. take them. hold them. grow into them child. you are the flower you have never had to wait for, you just failed to see them right in front of you.