May our first source of acceptance be from within – an abundance of unconditional love awaits us there. Connecting with it renders a peace unattainable in external pursuits.

In the opening of Spring, when fragrance from a hundred rising roses 
infuses the air, a hundred honeybees race toward the scent in the crisp cold,
before the morning sun can touch the dewy ground.

Their wings can be heard from afar
as a single tulip among the roses waits to feel the soft fuzz 
of a bee’s legs landing on its petals.
The 101st flower watches the roses and bees dance to an innate song.
And waits.
And waits. 

Daylight returns and sheaths the tulip without it having danced along.
She watches as nature’s couple exchange a nectar so golden it blends in with the rising sun, 
and wishes to taste an admiration so sweet.

Her petals, dressed in cream like a summer bride
and soft as feathers,
become a new color, with burnt 
red leaking through their centers and spreading up 
toward the feather’s curves.
Rough as matrimonial lace, they stick out among the velvety, rich-red petals.
Maybe this will win her nectar. 

Petals of mesh contort and divorce til they span out 
and form a poor resemblance to the roses,
beautifully fanned like the decorated wings of a peacock. 
They push away from the center ‘til it crumbles around the edges, 
and the stem begins splintering down its core.
Just enough to feel the soft fuzz 
of a bee’s legs land on the impostor velvet petals. 

A wobbly dance ensues and 
mutes the wind swirling in the background.
The tulip’s tender body follows the tiny lead of the honeybee 
as the two create euphoric splendor,
peace as quiet as morning awakening the day,
a nectar as golden as the sun rising behind them.
 
Once the soft fuzz is gone, 
and the tulip is alone with her nectar, 
she observes the treasure as one does the stars of an open night sky.
But the shiny appearance she remembers is missing, 
and the buttery texture which she imagined to melt at the touch
has a coldness that suffocates the skin and numbs the limbs. 
Is this what barehanded shape shifting earns you?
Biting away bloody pieces of yourself 
until a palatable thing remains.
She tastes it, hoping for a sweet kiss to receive her adoration,
but its sourness leaves bite marks on the edges of her tongue,
and a queasiness brewing in her stomach.
Eyes wincing in anger and disgust,
she spews the nectar and sees it spread out on the ground before her – 
Her prize. 

The sun makes its scope over the other half of the world 
as the tulip analyzes her lacey petals under the moon’s light, 
growing more discolored around their pointy ends by the hour
and more brittle to the touch.
She turns her face up toward the light, but her splintering stem can’t carry the weight, 
so it hangs toward the ground instead. 

The swirling wind sweeps one disintegrating 
petal away with it,
revealing a single cream-colored bud in its place –  
still green around the root, 
but soft as cotton to the touch –
hardly seen if not for the withering of the surrounding petals.

With the absent weight,
a deep inhale runs from the bud and up through the drying stem, 
reconnecting it with an estranged self,
familiar and comforting, 
a quiet and faithful presence. 

At the exhale, 
another rose leaf releases its grasp, 
and petals once spread out and contorted 
now curl inward, 
intertwining and weaving.

As crimson adorns the hills and troughs of the field, 
a milk-and-honey cream grows from the roots of a stem once broken.
While the moon and sun switch places, 
the tulip remeets herself – 
greeting the land as the rising sun does,
climbing over the high grounds first, then reaching down into the valleys.
The birds pay tribute to her arrival, 
their whistles blending with the incoming flight of a hundred honeybees – 
so well she barely notices their dance with the roses begin, 
focused instead on uprooting the final mesh petal 
with an inhale that runs through a stem now upstanding.

At the exhale, she releases a nectar of her own–
sweet as honeydew,
warm like one hand held in another.
A stream running forever,
with a fragrance infusing the air
and intertwining with that of a hundred rising roses.

Process

A life-long people pleaser, life began teaching me I am already inherently whole. This lesson didn’t come easily. It took one too many burnouts induced by self-sacrifice to get me there. I realized my chase toward acceptance reduced me into less of myself and left me no closer to a fulfilling life. Reading Tracy Secombe’s From People Pleaser To Soul Pleaser: Six Steps To Being Who You Are Meant To Be guided my interior journey. The writing process itself started with a rudimentary draft muddled by the spur of a midnight creativity burst. Thanks to a mentor who meets me in the brilliant and the blocked moments, I worked on this piece in stages as if it were a mini-chapter book, fleshing out one scene at a time. Once all the pieces were drafted, I revised until it conveyed my interior journey, coming into what is now Wellspring.