The bonsai tree
sat impassively on Her windowsill
above the grey cityscape flowing
in a state of
ever-growing.

And slowly,
by manifesting his own growth,
he lingered to overlook
the stagnant asphalt and
everyday crook.

He has learned to subsist
upon Her lint and cigarette,
the damp city lights,
and a windswept mountain silhouette.

But You...
...You came...
and impassively, too, your work began
to desecrate his sanctum serene
by severing his already
broken dream.

But for this I wish I knew.

The pot did not move.
Could not talk.
But sat, silently, in Your slipping stranglehold
to consecrate the ground with stems
that would bear no recognition
to his blind
ambition.

And so he grew,
gnarled, crooked, and back again,
as the Absents walked below,
through day’s end and day’s begin.

But now I know You all too well.
But now I know You all too well.