…of unfurling

In her loneliness , she is perceived as ethereal and distant
yet in the hours of solitude, her unspeakable burden
weighs heavily upon her fragile frame
and her face, ghostly, a tracery of fine lines, aches for colour
anchored in the cold earth, she dreams of unfurling
out of the shadows and into the light
as season after season her petals open
into nothing but emptiness
the darkness ever clawing at her back
the echoes of wishes dying in the void
her dreams unfulfilled, her stark pale face still haunts the night
and the wind carries her perfume
to all the places that she will never see
© Ann Bagnall