DAISY FRESH
A Coming of Age Poem & Reflection
There is a common phrase that you are everyone you’ve ever met, another that claims that you’re every version of yourself you’ve ever been.
Each passing year I fear the latter isn’t true.
In my mind, I am sitting below a willow tree, a daisy in hand.
The daisy feels as though it is mocking me.
I pick a petal off the seemingly never ending flower.
As it instantly wilts upon its landing on the floor I utter,
He loves me,
I hear the echoes of childhood movies faintly playing,
I hear the sound of my bike bell repeatedly sounding as me and my freshly removed training wheels make our way down the street.
He loves me not,
I feel the tears running down my face after skinning my knee on that same bike, returning on that path hadn’t felt the same following.
As the petals begin to visibly impact the flower, the feeling grows as well.
The daisy no longer looks fresh.
What once was white, with a bright blazing yellow down the middle has begun to dull.
If you had been walking through this field I doubt you would have paid it any mind.
But every discarded daisy you kick past,
That you view as a disturbance in the beauty,
Was once a daisy fresh girl,
Who has committed the crime of living past her use.
Looking Back On Daisy Fresh
When I wrote Daisy Fresh, I was only a few months into my sophomore year of high school, and the weight of growing up had already felt heavy on me. At fifteen, you don’t really feel like you’re much of anything.
For me, it was as though I was constantly chasing what I thought adulthood was, while at the same time longing for nothing more than to go back to my childhood, which sounds like a terribly cliche problem to have, but it’s one that becomes almost inescapable for any teenager, and frankly anyone at all.
Now, being seventeen years old and entering my senior year, these feelings are still relevant within me. A theme that I introduced within Daisy Fresh was attempting to return to things that remind you of your childhood, and them not being the same when you return to them. A natural part of growing up is moving past a lot of what you thought you’d never live without, which I think is captured in the piece from a lens of denial whereas now that I’ve grown older, it’s changed into something of acceptance.
It can be difficult to accept that life isn’t meant to stay as it once was, and an issue that I face often is finding the distinction between happy memories and happiness itself. So much of life can be spent chasing what we think holds the key to happiness because we were happy at one point where we happened to have that thing, but a part of growing up is that you realize things are just things. The daisy being held and picked apart doesn’t have any more value when it is beautiful and fresh than it does when it is picked over and wilted, the only change within it is from the perception of the beholder.
Within the context of the piece, this was used for multiple symbolisms, most directly for the symbolism of women. As a young girl, it can be troubling to figure out where you fall in terms of society’s expectations.
Fifteen is so young, but it doesn’t feel like it. Everyone around me, me included, was trying to package themselves up into the best offer, and the best imagination of what a girl should be, picking off a piece of themselves in the process. Reflecting on the piece now, I see some of the fear in the piece. The understanding of change, and the fear of what’s to come. Scared of how much more life could pick apart, scared that nothing would stay the same, scared of ending up like the discarded daisy.
Now, I understand that nostalgia is a silent killer. A lot of things have changed for me that I wouldn’t have expected when I initially wrote the piece. While these fears I wrote about are still relevant, the good part of growing up and changing is realizing that you don’t always need to push against it. Sure, sometimes you’ll feel wilted, or long for what once was, but at the end of the day, aren’t we all wilted daisies?