My Name, Written in Petals
San Jose, CA
2025, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word
My grandmother’s garden had no fences
but a fig tree split the soil like scripture.
my knees, scarred from gravel and grapevine,
knew the patience of sprouting things.
summer meant silence except for
crickets preaching under the porch light,
and the sky — peach-skinned, peeling.
I used to bury beetles under my tongue,
pretending I was part of the earth,
something with six legs, something
not so afraid of endings.
they say the ozone is thinning like
old quilts — you know, the kind with
cigarette burns and forgotten stains.
we used to hang laundry on a line
like prayer flags,
but the air now doesn’t forgive
inhalations — it bites back,
smells like something synthetic,
like how plastic flowers have too much color.
I count clouds like tally marks.
today I saw one shaped like a lung
collapsed halfway across the sky.
when I’m outside,
I taste iron in the wind and
moss behind my teeth.
I press my ear to the dirt and listen —
not for answers,
but for proof we haven’t
suffocated everything yet.
my connection to nature
isn’t metaphysical or divine,
it’s dirt under my nails,
sunburn that peels like regret,
rainwater pooling in my shoes
after I tried to save a worm from the sidewalk.
once, I planted tulip bulbs
in the shape of my name
but forgot where.
now each spring,
I walk the garden wondering
which bloom means
I existed.
Reflection
Reflection
The poem began with my knees. I remembered how dirt used to cling to them in summer and how I didn’t mind. That memory sprouted into the fig tree, the laundry lines, the taste of moss—images stitched together like patches on my grandmother’s apron. I didn’t sit down thinking, “I will write about nature.” I wrote about what I missed. What I’m afraid we’re forgetting. What inspired me most was the way grief can live in the body as quietly as it does in the environment. The loss of breath. The buried tulip bulbs I can’t find anymore. Through this contest, I realized that our connection to nature isn’t just spiritual or visual—it’s deeply personal. Our environment is shaped by how we treat each other, what we hold onto, and what we let rot. For my message, I wanted to convey that nature is not a concept. It’s a fig tree, a name forgotten, a worm writhing on a sidewalk. We don’t need to “reconnect” with it—we are it. We’re just bad at recognizing ourselves sometimes.