Pretense

“The wind whistles past,

The trees get blown to one side

then to the other.

Plants uproot themselves

as if to walk over to her for safety.

The storm leaves none.

The strongest branches tear apart

She, who watered them each morn

brings down the shutters,

leaving the garden she once created

to fend for itself.”

I wrote this poem quite a while ago when I was a kid. My mother used to talk a lot about how much she loved her garden and how the plants were her children. She used to scold me for not helping her out as she was getting older but something that always struck me as a child was the the fact that she didn’t care about her so called children when there were storms, thunder and rain pattering down the rooftop uprooting her children and drowning them in its drizzle. It made me question if she really loved them or if it was all just some sort of aesthetic pretense.