Desert Flower

I'm waiting for the rains to come
hidden within
I  breath
I survive
but I wait for the rains to come

Nothing covers me from the blazing sun
my beauty shines in it's rays
then I try to hide beneath the sharpness of thorns
the prickliness of leaves
it's all I have

Child of the desert
I breath
I survive
but I wait for the rains to come

I reach
I stretch towards hands that never pick me
cultivated flowers
planted in humid hot houses
sheltered and nurtured
they grow long and wide
I know nothing of that kind of touch

The hard baked ground is my mother
my father thinly veiled in my bloom
I breath
I survive
but I wait for the rains

The first signs of its coming
in the dampness of the air
I open easy
I wait vulnerable
for the first drops
as they fall caressing me
I open wider
the moment is fleeting
but I glory in the feeling when it arrives

I breath
I thrive


“The Black woman is the most unprotected, unloved woman on earth…she is the only flower on earth…that grows unwatered.”

Kola Boof, Egyptian-Sudanese-American novelist and poet