Yellow Tulips

There was a man who carried a yellow tulip with him wherever he went.

Sometimes it adorned the tip of his left ear .

Sometimes it was placed gently between the laces of his left shoe.

Other times it was plastered between his teeth like gold.

The other men would glare at him as he wept down Broadway

Most of them would snicker

“What is he… gay?”

Others would shift their gazes to the shops, ignoring what they had seen.

And his heart would thunder, but still…

He would never leave behind his yellow tulip.

On Monday nights the man was lonely,

Accompanied only by normality and the scent of despair.

He worked long nights filing papers for strangers that knew nothing of his existence.

He spent his mornings dreading the return home,

Wishing that there was a safe haven within a city with a lack of dreams.

City buses can be a new kind of evil when located within small towns

So he dragged his feet, breathing in nicotine that cradled his lungs like the mother he once knew.

But if nothing else mattered, and if there was nothing left of her…

At least he had a yellow tulip.

Sleeping at last…

Those tulips traveled everywhere with him.

Subway stations and tents for broken people.

Large city offices and a house composed of hideous oak.

The light fades so quickly,

But at least he had her tulips.

Tulips wilting beneath his closed lids,

Tulips the breathe in tunes of melancholy

Tulips that led him astray.

Not all of us get the parents we deserve.

But still, he held onto her tulips beneath his clenched fists,

And bled his pain into their fragile petals.

Tulips of a wide-eyed child.

Tulips of river tears.

Tulips of the worst type of love.