Lizzy Burnam 🐞

Love poem for a dying aloe vera plant

we loved you through 
the long cold December 
we tried 
tried to keep you 
warm 
ran our fingers along 
your small serrated teeth 
trusted you not 
to bite 
when you got too big, 
we lifted you 
gently out of your 
too-small pot
brushed the soil from 
your roots 
sat you comfortably 
in a new 
terra cotta home 
and if 
ever we over-watered 
you, it was not 
for a lack of love, but for 
an abundance 
of it—a storm 
of love
ignorant love 
we didn’t know not 
to flood 
you with it, please
just 
hang in there
spring is coming