Sunflowers
On grief, and the rage of the world.
i.
Turn your face to the sun, my dear
As we did when we were young
— chasing rays and highs in every corner of our
Bright little lives.
Before we knew loss
Before we knew what it felt like to feel
Functionally Insane
Going through the motions of each day and
Screaming inside
At everyone else’s ability to just exist
Normally.
Before we knew what it was to hate the people we love,
For they have what we do not.
Before it became business as usual for children to be
Shot in the head
In some poor, brown country, far,
Far away from here.
How awful,
We say,
As we scroll to the next video
—the absent-minded, routine twitch
of a thumb the only thing
separating hell on Earth from picture-perfect, curated
whimsy:
A dog that collects seaglass
A homesteader who pickles things wearing gingham
A crocheter
Who never thinks of murdered babies,
or cancer,
or suicide,
Ever.
ii.
Did you know that sunflowers
Are made up of thousands of tiny,
uniform microflowers?
Countless potential for new life
In every single one
—a tiny cocoon of possibility,
Waiting for its time to be shed,
spread,
Or to be eaten, who knows.
That’s what life is,
I guess,
Isn’t it?
You could go so far,
Put down your own roots in some quiet corner of a brand new
World,
Or you could end up being eaten
By a gardener named Gerald.
You could die of some tragically common disease,
Powerless to stop people ascribing to you every single fucking cliche under the sun:
She lost her battle.
He was an inspiration.
They are always in our hearts.
The week my father died,
my body collapsed in on itself.
28 years old, still strong and unencumbered,
I became a vacant, heavy
Lump.
On the morning of 16th March, 2021,
I was again
Heavy in my bed, sobbing
For six murdered Asian women in Atlanta I did not know.
That day,
My grief took me to the garden,
And I buried my hands in soil,
Perhaps digging up some tuber or other,
Or even planting
sunflowers.
When Death came for a close friend,
I played tennis.
This time, my body cried for movement,
For the smash of rubber on plastic,
For the reach in my shoulder,
For the pain in my lungs.
I went on runs where I would cry and scream
Openly
Alarming passers-by and disturbing the birds with my deranged howling.
But the sound
catching in the back of my throat
held me to life—this small and critical function of my body the only thing pulling me back from the abyss.
Later,
When I saw the bodies pile up in Gaza
With a frequency that suggested this was
The right and normal order of the world,
I would take walks where I would obsessively
Touch the trees
Running my fingertips over the ridges and crevices
of every trunk,
Searching for evidence of natural systems that made sense.
Because nothing made any sense.
iii.
Bees perceive UV patterns on sunflower petals that humans cannot see,
Human eyes see
A cheerful yellow.
The bee sees
An ultraviolet landing guide.
Our grief is its own sunflower petal.
To most, we are
Robustly yellow,
Solidly yellow,
Reliably yellow.
Resiliently yellow.
Only to those with the power to truly see
is the map of our entire lives,
with all its painful lessons and love—and we have known so much love—
perceptible.
These maps are found in every garden,
In every forest,
In every park, even.
Around each corner is another clue,
Another telltale sign of damage,
of cellular repair,
of perfectly imperfect regeneration:
Not unique
Not alone
Merely a routine part of an ancient pattern.
The morning will always come,
The kindness of the dawn will congratulate you
For making it through yet another day,
And you will trundle on,
Searching for meaning here and there,
Or simply
Just existing,
coping,
being.
Turn your face to the sun, my dear.
