God save her, the legend had her mother
praying before the bandits’ hands came upon her.
And the Light shot up, and hid her in the ground,
a shrinking prickle among weeds.
But eyes still seek her out in the grass, steal
into her wakefulness, watch her fold
beneath their touch, prodding in and out of the false death.
Cochineals impetuously invade her.

Eyes fiddle with her mimic shrinking grace—mimosa
pudica—the books call her, retiring, pinnate leaves withdrawing,
drooping under the curious glare. This queer receding
in terror as though the beasts are again upon her,
breathing down on the closed theater
of her slow becoming.

Trembling into featurelessness,
and dissolving in this state of waiting,
not for impatient hands that would save her,
nor for your praises-- but for the long hot nights
when the bristles appear, growth’s passion rising
to stain her green shafts, burgeon sore
before the opening of the blowball—the firecracker
purple bloom of a single day. Locked
in love's embrace, and withering
under the infinitesimal weight
of our obstinate watch.

© Rhodora Peñaranda