SOLD: Lily Pad No. 251

Loving in vain, she wanders down forked dirt roads
Lined with daisies disguising foul scents to false places;
Wonders why diamonds fail to inspire the magic of pretense –
Luxuriantly illusory comforts like kisses in pythons' embraces –
Her verdancy transposing inverted poetry of unpossessable cads.

In her former life she flitted across lily pads,
As content as other doted-on, bloated toads,
Blind to the green-gray pond scum swirling below,
Cataracts having tricked her sedated mind
Into losing track of idle time idolizing him.

Since then she has shed the last layer of thin skin,
Save webbed tenderness between maple-brown toes,
Which limits her flight to safe hops and brave leaps
Through lovely nothingness, air currents on ecstasy's throes,
Fantasies of him whispered to bent leaves on mocking trees.

Nightfall finds her laughing, dancing away invisible pain
As twinkling stars envy her incandescence in motion,
Fingertips snapping sparklers into existence amid fireflies,
Microbraids whipping up rhythms to a trip-hop essence –
Unrequited love reveling in the spirit of reptilian resistance.