sunflowers
are my favorite flower.
something about the big, bright, open yellow
captivates me
and makes me
(almost always slightly secretly dour)
smile so huge.

i often forget that half of the flower is brown,
the earth/
the base of nature/
it wouldn’t be a sunflower without that circle of non-yellow;
the seeds to form new flowers in the future
the giving after giving
of joy/
of new life/
of another kind of open-ness.

i know it’s a bit toxic
to constantly give,
but take it from the sunflower:
sometimes giving gives us our own beauty.