Blue Chicory

It has made its way, on wind,
far into the city, and it nods there,
on streetcorners, in what July wind
its slips garner. Since childhood
I have loved it, it is so violet-blue,
its root, its marrow, so interred,
prepared to suffer, impossible to move.
Weed, wildflower, grown waist-high
where it is no one’s responsibility
to mow, its blue-white
center frankly open
as an eye, it flaunts
its tender, living lingerie,
the purple hairs of its interior.
Women are weeds and weeds are women,
I once heard a woman say.
Bloom where you are planted, said my mother.

Catherine Rankovic

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