Sunflowers

I’m in the world but I still want the world.
I’m full of longing and can’t move,
enthralled in the garden. Having died 
all the way back to the root, I grow again 
into a version of the thing I love. I’m her 
and not her, hermaphrodite with a heart 
like a plateful of black flames.
The bees inspect me like doctors. 
All my hard little tears, future selves 
who haven’t grown. Bedclothes swell on the line
while around me giant sunflowers burn
through their masks of radiant desire.

Credit

Copyright © 2022 by Jenny George. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 2, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.

About this Poem

“When I’m working in a deep place, I’m looking for correspondences. I wrote ‘Sunflowers’ to help me think about the cycles of plant life in my garden alongside the cycles of desire and death in human relationships.”
Jenny George