Fallen Crowns of Crushed Daisies

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She misses the spinning dances of Ring around the Rosy with her pockets filled with Posy, tightly clasping hands while the world whirled until her head spun. Her mother warned her not to spin, her weak stomach unable to handle the turbulence. She gazes longingly upon the merry-go-rounds from her perch upon the swings.

The other kids always tease because she likes to lie in flower beds and wear long dresses with no shoes. She ties the buttercups and lilacs as they bloom into her fly-away brown hair. She proclaims the flowers her subjects as she was dubbed Queen of the Marigolds and Lilies. She likes to chase the floating dandelion seeds across the sky naming the clouds as she runs.

She sits alone smelling of rosebuds eating her cheese sandwich and apple everyday, watching Red Rover and wishing she could propel herself into the chain she knew she could break. Her legs scissor beneath her when she sits as her hair creeps out of the braids her mother carefully placed that morning, tying in a sprig of jasmine. They call her the flower child and she does not know why she shouldn't like that. Their pointed fingers cause her soft green eyes to mist and her crown of daises fall as her head bows down.

She is the Princess of the Daffodils and Snapdragons, eater of cheese sandwiches with dirty feet and long white dresses.

The daises curtsey her.