You do not have to be a prisoner in your own pot

A knotty mess of rules or lawlessness

What little soil remains hard and resistant to water

With roots like tired rhetoric poking out the bottom

Last flowers put up as a flag of desperation

Once upon a time you were a healthy seedling

Shotgunning new pathways all over the place

Before you thought you knew enough about the world

Before you replaced childlike wonder with presumed grownup wisdom

It’s no treat to have your roots broken up

To risk a transplant to a new, unfamiliar pot

Where survival cannot be guaranteed

But how then to know how big you could have grown?

How parched you really were?