she took her sweet time
two years of pot-into-sink
1-minute-running-water
back-to-the-windowsill-shelf
wipe-down-the-spill
she waited through two years of that waltz
to show her first flowers
my orchid
never vocal in her demands
just insistent on her worth
she laid her flat leaves out,
three to the left,
three to the right
and saw no rush in soaking in the bedroom sun
setting through my western windows
for two years,
before even showing her first bud,
she made the stakes of the game clear:
every sunday,
you must bathe me
without fail
and, I, one day
after years of taking the sunset into my body
at a time inexplicable and unknowable to all but me
will burst that same sunset back out for you
to gaze upon like angel-feather fireworks
she took two years to get ready
- what a femme fatale -
and then with neither fanfare nor pretension
one - inexplicable and unknowable - day
she came out of her dressing room
in full bloom