Sunflowers

I find myself on the edge of a storm, sowing seeds ever so carefully. I don't know why I find myself in the garden when it's about to pour. I stand on the very edge sweating in the last corner of sunlight, with the heavy gray sky whispering her secrets to the last few days of spring. I find my tattoo'd knuckles warm in the dirt, literally burying a metaphor with my sunflowers. It's prayer to summer, to tomorrow, to that rainbow I feel on the back of my neck.

It's taken me years to admit my love affair with flowers. Somehow I was afraid of not being enough--man enough, butch enough, to pass for normal.... enough.

I never was butch, I had the swagger but not the heart, this has always put me on the edge of tears, and I have never known why.

I think of the years I spent in the fields of Watsonville, I think of the men who would get up early in the morning and lay down the 14 foot pipes to water. I think of the lettuce and kale. I think of my favorite flowers--agrostemma-- the roses of heaven. I harvested, I boxed, I washed, I loaded the truck, I ran the market.... it was working on the farm that led me to being able to harvest sides of myself. It was at the farm that I could finally love flowers and still have my masculinity. It was working for a farm that gave me the support I needed to transition, no questions asked. Live and let live. As I tended to produce, I too, blossomed.

And today with the whisper of rain, and my sweat mingling with a rainbow, I sow my prayers to summer, to tomorrow, to sunflowers.