Sunflowers by Jenny George
MARGINALIA • SKIP TO THE POEM
1.
The world feels different when you lose someone. Colours become faded for awhile, as if they have bled through the hole where your heart used to be, and it’s only your hand over your chest that prevents everything from haemorrhaging completely—your stupid hand clutching cloth and skin, a weak fist.
2.
One time I woke up in the middle of the night with blood all over me. I must’ve scratched myself in my sleep. Shallow as the wound was it was still a wound, and I wondered what I so desperately clawed my way out of, if I was in the clear, if I have saved myself. In the morning the mark on my skin reminded me of a thistle. If you asked me what blooms from the pain, I will say this body. This self before you. These fingers which have become claws and when curled towards the centre of my palm becomes a soft stone.
3.
I want the world so desperately sometimes I feel my desire is too wild to contain within my skeleton. Have you ever felt so frenzied about something larger than your life?
4.
I am in the world and what little I can fathom I am grateful for.
5.
I keep thinking about my future selves. The ones I have yet to meet. The ones I have yet to birth. The ones who are still unnamed. What aches do they carry. What joys. What losses will break them open. And will they know they are loved.
6.
The world is different when you love someone. You become a person you are meant to be. Grow into it the way the philodendron leans toward the window seeking more sunlight. Fill yourself to the brim and not think you are in danger of spilling. Because the fullness is what gives you shape, what makes you feel held, what makes you want to live.
Sunflowers
Jenny GeorgeI’m in the world but I still want the world.
I’m full of longing and can’t move,
enthralled in the garden. Having died
all the way back to the root, I grow again
into a version of the thing I love. I’m her
and not her, hermaphrodite with a heart
like a plateful of black flames.
The bees inspect me like doctors.
All my hard little tears, future selves
who haven’t grown. Bedclothes swell on the line
while around me giant sunflowers burn
through their masks of radiant desire.
Endnotes
This poem appeared in Poem-a-Day, published by the Academy of American Poets, 2022. Shared here with profound gratitude.
Read more works by Jenny George • Find books by this poet• Or view my library
Explore poems in pursuit of: becoming • nature • growth • Or browse the index
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Patricia F. Neyman
I have never been very interested in poetry. I think I was greatly affected by the stupid assignments we had in English class in the university my first year when I was 17. I didn’t really get why I had to figure out what all these words meant and figure out clever things to say about them the way they wanted me to. I didn’t actually get anything about poetry until we read to be or not to be. That is the question. At the time I was trying to make a major decision in my life, whether to bed down with this person I was attracted to. Sex should wait until I was married, I had been taught, but well it was complicated. This all consuming ferris wheel caused me to neglect my studies, but my passionate essay on the final exam on to be or not to be saved me from the F that I really deserved. I still can’t say that I developed a love of poetry but I want to thank you for having these individual poems available. It does make it possible to dip into it. Nature was a very important refuge for me as a youngster. So I feel like I should probably read more of Mary Olivers work. But then I looked her up and had no idea where to begin.
I feel like I have missed something really great. I’m in my 80s and not much time left now. But it is a time of life when one starts to wonder what the hell we are here for. And did I accomplish anything? I don’t think so but even people who do great things probably feel that they are small in the end I imagine. I had a point I was going to make but it seems to have escaped me. Or maybe it didn’t. Blessings to you.