• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content

Blue Marble Review

Literary Journal for Young Writers

  • Home
  • About
    • Masthead
    • Contact
    • Donate
  • Issues
    • Covid Stories
  • FAQs
  • Submit

To save flowers

By Marina Chen

Warm chrysanthemum
the same color as butter bled into strawberry jam

went limp two nights ago.
I sobbed and cut the stems,
filled a vase and arranged the blooms. If they were to die,

I might as well enjoy the show.
Is there a point to giving
a gift that dies like stop motion? Or are they the ultimate

gesture—here, a fragment of life—
trimmed from the life-source
of pulsing Earth—I trust you will try to preserve them.

This is my secret: it’s possible
to save flowers, for my
watered chrysanthemums flourished—turgid rebirth.

I awoke the next morning,
their discarded stems like
snapped chopsticks in the sink, new buds emerging.

 

 

Marina Chen is a high schooler from Washington State and member of the Seattle Youth Poet Laureate cohort. Her work has been recognized by the National Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, Live Poets Society of New Jersey, the Hanging Loose literary magazine, and others. She writes poetry about everything she loves (and many things she doesn’t.)

Filed Under: Poetry Tagged With: Issue Eighteen

Copyright © 2023 · Site by Sumy Designs, LLC