Sonnet to my Mother, Nature

By: Flavia Nunez

The color you wear is my favorite one.

It breathes in more than the others; it stays.

Because even when the spring season has gone,

I still see your green bleeding into my days.

How nice it is to live where it is always hot, they say.

But it is not; not when the vicious sun chains us indoors,

And I can never dig myself out of the indomitable gray.

But you stay outside my window, under rays that are just yours.

My mother calls me from the front porch, she says I need some sun.

I tell her fine and go outside, stopping before your blades of grass.

I stare for a long time—at your green, at your trees, at your son.

A standing flower so bright, fragile like colored ocean glass.

Soon, my skin turns itchy, blotchy red and I race back inside for my creams,

For the sun is not the only reason I can never have you, never wear your green.