Blossoming (An Ode to Cliches)

You took me softly in the night:

I was a flower, and you were the stamen, emerging from deep inside me. Our kisses ripened like the papaya I bought you for breakfast.

I ate the leftovers for lunch, as you sat on a fancy couch in another country, sipping your mother's tea. You only remembered to miss me in between spoonfuls of sugar - a slave-trade commodity.

It would be easier to close myself up, like a rose in nighttime, or to let you get pricked by my thorns. Instead, I bend back my petals, and cry beneath the stalks of your feet.