Snapdragons

And I remember, suddenly, the snapdragons in your window well.
The tiny ones, wild like vines that brambled their fragile way through dead leaves, garbage,
and a small skeleton
(a mouse, though it might have been the silence between us... the years that stretched on and the nights between this one and that, when you were little and screaming in my worried arms)
to tap ever so gently on the sidewalk above
praying for the rain to fall harder, to reach your covered window.
I don't don't know that anyone ever saw them
pink and red and yellow
like bravery, like hope, like love,
swaying with each drop of rain
But I remember. I remember the snapdragons,
and so, though weary, I will try again.