Wildflower. Wallflower. Wildfire.

He is a mumbler when he speaks.  I guess I'm hard of hearing and the two of us didn't make a great pair no matter how hard we tried.

I never understood what he wanted...or maybe I just didn't try hard enough to listen.  He spoke in riddles and slurred his words together and let them slip out just beneath his breath.

I guess that's what happened when I thought I heard him say he wanted a wildfire.  I guess that's why I thought I was right for him.

It turns out he wanted a wildflower.  Someone bright and free and dazzling but still soft and beautiful and pleasant.

It turns out that's not who I am.  It's who I used to be, but that's not enough because now I'm two steps away from that version of me.

All the pieces of me are too similar; wildflower, wallflower, wildfire.  It's easy enough to get them confused; especially when he whispers no matter how many times I beg him to speak up.

If he'd known me back then, when I was bright eyed and saw the world through a prism of color and possibility maybe we would've had a chance.  But he met me when I was a wallflower, clinging to the edges of reality with a fragile grip, ready to let go.

And now, he hasn't noticed that the wallflower caught fire and now I'm a raging, dangerous wildfire that burns up anything in my path.  He hasn't noticed that the soft edges of me are burned up, turned to ash, turned to flame.

He thinks he knows me but he doesn't.  He calls my blue-green eyes emerald and it just proves he hasn't noticed that there's quite a bit of blue in my sometimes green.

He thinks he knows me but he doesn't.  He tells me I have my life together when if you asked him to name three things that make up "my life" I don't think he actually could.

Despite it all; all the miscommunication and the attention he doesn't ever pay, I still try to tame the flames and be the wildflower he wants.  I try to turn the flicking tongues of destruction into poised nonthreatening petals.

Wildflower...wallflower...wildfire...what does it matter anyway?  Whether I'm wild or tame he doesn't know my middle name; he doesn't know me.

He doesn't try.  He just mumbles and drifts past me, only latching on when he's bored.

Wildflower...Wallflower...Wildfire...it doesn't matter.  He doesn't see me.