Chinese Lanterns

She tried to grow them but
they wouldn’t.
She read the cautionary words –

they’ll take over
spread like wildfire
run for your life
poison will be necessary in the end –

but in the end nothing was necessary.
In her garden they refused to grow.
Like other things she feared her craving of,
in the end there was nothing left to crave or fear.

She wanted their papery orange boxes
crowding her empty garden,
filling her autumns with final flames.
She shouldn’t have studied, read up, considered so
carefully her ending-poison options.
She should’ve thrown caution to the spring winds and
bedded them in the richest compost, watered them every day,
not been so meager, afraid to let them know her secret:
I care.  I want you.
Hers is a fearful field, thought they,
and they, in scorn, withered.