Root Rot

The seed was planted long ago

Nourished by bravery and betrayal

By water and blood.

Roots burrowed into the dark earth

Drinking the life of the land

Ravenous tendrils claimed the richness

Of the wild for itself.

And so the seed flourished.

Sprouting of stalk and stem , of leaf and vine

The seed reached toward the sun and grew a shadow

The shadow stretched far from the base, drowning all other growth in darkness

And so the neighbors withered.

The flower was beautiful but the roots were rotted

Soaked in too much decay, too much disease

The illness was inherent, inherited from a tainted seed.

Still though the flower reached, still though it fought

To leave the fetid, sickly, rotten Root.