Sweet Dandelion

by Micalea Smeltzer

“My sweet, Dandelion. May you always be as free as the birds, as wild as the flowers, and untamed as the sea.”

I try not to let it bother me, after all I’m very lucky to be on my own two feet, but sometimes I feel like a bird with a broken wing, destined to never fly and it hurts all over again.

I’m trying. I have to try. If it takes one day at a time to get better, I have to start somewhere.

“You seem like someone I’m meant to know.”

“Life clips our wings,” I murmur softly, wiping condensation from the side of the water glass. “Everyone tells you to dream big, but then society does everything it can to keep you grounded.”

I press the flower into the middle of the pages. Hidden, like our love, but existing nonetheless.

It’s maddening loving someone so much when you wish you could hate them instead.