Pot Plants

Written by Indigo Loau

The night was my epiphany 

I awoke. 

Peeling a plastered tongue, my surroundings offered no sustenance. Thirsty – dehydrated from constant malnutrition 

Petals, 

Once childlike decorations, 

Were plucked to prime for your perilous pursuits 

Your influence on my childhood was a break-and-enter, Robbing my ability 

to dream and conjure the sounds of a world 

Of my youthful creation 

And instead to a sentence of the realities of dark abuse. Reality … sound, words of disappointment and resentment. 

No greater pain may exist than scrubbing one’s skin Raw, 

till it bleeds — the trauma inflicted. 

To exfoliate the dead memories 

of painful reminders that only administer wounding recollection. 

My past is an ornament of flowers I keep in my house that pay compliments to my strength and resilience. My pot – a world of my dictatorship. 

After surviving off kerosene, 

for the sole purpose of your delight 

in the blossoming of crisp petals.

I thirsted for the forever-flowing fountains of self-preservation and vacated to the outdoors to breathe in the sunlight's attention. 

No longer an ornament in your house — but my own growing being.