No Need to Be Strong

Botany is a poem about people, a reflection on how impossible it often is to understand them.

I asked my therapist what it means if 
          one day 
 one friend stops talking to you and the other never stops ringing
          even though nothing happened. 
 Perhaps I should have pulled in a non-incident or spun a web or                   
          better still, 
 quizzed her on why precisely she keeps pointing out                      
          the strangeness of people, 
 the hues and intricacies she learned about when first studying              
          botany at college. 
Take Ivy, for example, she explains, to some walls, it sticks, 
          to others, it doesn’t. 
 Or even the Venus Fly Trap, she continues, now all enthused, 
          some flies,
 it simply won’t swallow. So, you see, people are strange, she 
          concludes 
 as she looks at the wall clock. At this point, she picks up her 
          flower bible.
 Bring it back to me next week, she says.