There once was a vase with a flower,
rosy and plump, like peaches, sweet and soft,
slim like a sprout of elegant green, with a graceful figure.
She lived in a vase made of glistening, crystal-clear glass,
an embracing enclosure of dewdrops, devoted to its lady.

Flower and vase, crystal and stem entwined—
has time taken its toll? Her figure seems to wilt.
Her petals, once aglow, now carry a brownish tint in their bloom.
She leans heavily on him, with a slouch in her stance.

She stayed in that vase, thirsty, with nothing to quench her.
Clouded and unwashed, her home became
a sole apartment for her petals to wither.
He holds her, but has yet to tend her.
Ten thousand embraces
can feel no warmth.

She’s desperate for water.
If you are a botanist,
will a flower truly thrive in a vase
which brims with nothingness?

She dreams and dreams
of the bloom she once felt so fiercely.
“Oh, if I grew in the riverbed,” she wailed,
“if it were the cutting of my stem,
the shaving of my petals,
I should be grateful—
and yet the thirst would not yield.
It lasts longer than a bloody execution.”

He refuses to fill,
and I crave to drink.

Under the windowsill,
choking on her pollen,
her last words to me:

“He held me close,
only to deprive me of water.
What could I do,
for it was simply what I needed?”