A lousy poem for two of my sisters.
Not the lousy sisters, though; the two who don't qualify as lousy.
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You are never so alone
As how you feel,
Break through cold stone,
Find what's real.

Find the eye of the storm,
Follow it to better times;
Deduct the form,
Forget their crimes.

Just beyond the next few bends,
Beyond the line of sight;
There waits Joy, and Hope extends,
Beyond the end of night.

An attempt to express myself somehow. Hopefully I won't screw it up too badly.

I went shopping with a friend the other day, and at the grocery store, I stopped in front of a display of phalaenopsis orchids. It bothers me that phalaenopsis is the only orchid you ever see at grocery stores. There are so many other species, so much more color than what phalaenopsis displays, and yet grocery store orchids bother me on so many levels that I can only skim the surface. I did not see any blue phalaenopsis flowers, which at least made me a little happy.

I traced the outline of one of the flowers, along the stem from behind the white petals, and found an unopened bud. The sensation of feeling an orchid bud sent a thrill through me and made me recall in a rapid flash all the orchids I've ever kept - the excitement that there is in watching the plant slowly change from just a basal thing, to shoots, to buds, and finally to flowers. From a simple root system, into green-tipped fingers poking into the air through the wood substrate, to spiderwebs of velum-like tendrils dangling below the hangers.

All of this went through my mind in a matter of only a few moments, in pictures, in memory of feelings. It left me with a sense of longing, a melancholy. The world is a cruel place. Up here in the cold northern states, it's hard to keep orchids. I have no job, so I can't build a greenhouse. I have no property to build one on, anyhow. The tradeoff is that it snows here. This year has been nothing but a sick joke - no snow, and deprived of my orchids. Why did I ever leave Florida? Things get better in time. I keep telling myself that.

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I never talk about myself. That should be a general rule.

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