Figures.
Just days after
the untended garden
blossomed a poem
someone came by
with a mower
to cut it all down.
Beauty destroyed,
the queens were beheaded,
and the courts of butterflies
were scattered
into foreign kingdoms,
scattered
like the shreds
of leaf and petal,
scattered
like foolish hope
finally dashed
on reality’s stones.
Bleeds fear.

Will this be the fate
of all my other dreams,
to discover beauty
only when it’s on the verge
of being eradicated?
Did my unseen enemy
catch me listening
to all you had to say,
recognizing 
the power of your rainbows?
Did I doom you?
Should I now assume
that everything I could want
is already doomed?
People prove that true
all the damn time
and they came for you, too.

But it’s not like they knew
the damage they could do
through you
to the spirit of another
and that is its own truth.
People rarely set out
to hurt other people
and so much of the time
it’s part of a reaction
to their own hurts.

Life’s need to move on
creates victims.
Thus, how you fall.
Guess I was really just hoping
what beauty I had found
could have lasted
a little bit longer.