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your mama had named you azalea whilst laced under the periwinkle myrtle tree in your grandma's lovely little backyard with budding primroses and hundred-something-year-old memories upon those cedar swings.

your mama had named you azalea with daffodils placed in those butterscotch curls you grew up to comb into pretty little twirls- honey glazed over your intricate skin and grace upon your tongue- you were elegant like an azalea blooming under lunatic moons and disfigured constellations- hence the pretty name.

oh, my sweet azalea- you good little chapel girl with those bloody corsets asphyxiating your tiny waist and cherry chambers. your beauteous body carved in silk but you dressed to be modest with that virgin blood singing o praise the name as you take secret strolls through your lover boy's lavender fields that sung back to you in melancholic achings.

your papa had asked with feigned concern laced over his bloody blemished tongue, how your flawless ranunculus knees had ugly scrapes in fine lines but you, my little azalea- your mama never taught you how to tell a pretty little lie.

so you run barefoot all the way to downtown with wilting peonies clenched in the palm of your clammy hands so you could confess some twisted consonants to your god in velvet hopes that those remorseful bruises upon your feeble heart would bloom into marigolds and dainty rays of divine light.

peachy frostbites and stupid heart stitched to the seams of your stained sleeves- azalea, you will forever be my favorite lost soul.