She was a late bloomer.
When the other girls wore mascara in 7th grade,
she zipped up her favorite hoodie and wondered why.
(She looks back on pictures now and knows why.)
But she didn’t care.
She wanted her books and her music and her laughter,
not the attention of a prepubescent boy.
Some people said she “just did her own thing,”
which some people said as a compliment,
and other people didn’t.
She wasn’t the It girl in high school.
She didn’t draw attention to herself,
she watched the quintessential high school drama unfold
but still she just
did her own thing.
And that was okay.
But she did bloom, the shy bud.
She bloomed into herself.
While she wasn’t the one that all the boys chased after,
she had a beauty of her own that lay beneath the skin.
If anyone were to wade into
the deep waters of her mind,
they’d see a rare loveliness
not found in many girls her age.
But sometimes those deep waters were rough.
And dark.
Her thoughts would crash against the rocks
and she would
doubt.
She doubted her beauty, her goodness, her worth.
She would wilt under the stress of the world
and the power of other’s words on her soul.
She started to feel
Different
and she didn’t like it.
The soil beneath her was rocky. She couldn’t thrive.
Until one day,
she realized
that if she wanted sunlight
she had to be the sun.
She couldn’t count on anyone to tell her what she was
(or what she wasn’t.)
If she needed rain, she would be her rain,
and she’d dance and laugh in the storm.
And
she
bloomed.
More radiant than before,
with that same deep beauty
that takes time
to bloom.
Wildflowers pop up
and disappear
in a day.
They’re pretty, but that’s it.
She was an orchid,
priceless and patient.
When she bloomed, people noticed.
Instead of plucking her,
they admired her
and nurtured her
so she would grow
brighter.
And like the orchid,
she bloomed alone,
not among a field of poppies.
They wondered how she did it.
She smiled and said,
“I just do
my own thing.”
a. w.
Audrey D. DeBoer 