Bluebonnet spring covers Texas,
flowers so beautiful and pristine
to the southern state
of forced immigration
from African countries,
that it’s become more protected than its citizens.

“... it would be highly frowned upon,”
Jeff Willford says when discussing
the picking of the flower.

And what of the picking of citizens?

In a place filled with so many races
that you could paint rainbows with them
and gift it to the large LGBTQ+ community
that shares this place with the rest.

Are we not taught from birth about the importance of acceptance?
Did we lose that lesson somewhere
between being a child
and being rich?

If not greed, then why
is it that the real bluebonnets of this state
are being picked and forced back to their “home”?

Is this not their home?

As a teenager
who spectates the world
from a window,
watching as my — our — world changes.

How should I feel safe
in a place that says it values diversity,
yet when given the chance,
destroys it like weeds
infecting the pureness of a white lily garden.

Bluebonnet spring,
you come once more.

Shall I watch as your pink or red brethren are turned blue
with the tears you tell your government to water them with?

Why should you be protected
and valued over the life of diversity
and its people?

Yet, here I shall stay.

Waiting for the day that our people
will return to what I once knew.

May we come together one day,
brighter,
more vibrant than that of a
Bluebonnet Spring.