THE DANDELION
  As seen by a child:
 She settled into the warm grass, crossing her legs, bending her back, and steadied her gaze into the face of the dandelion.  The warm hair was heavy with the fecund smell of soil and mixed scents of roses, jasmine, and honeysuckle.  Each elongated yellow fibril drew the child’s gaze into the flower’s core, until yellow was taste and smell, and something she could explore by running the tips of her fingers along the tender edges of the half orb formed by the tendrils. She picked it, and brought it up closer to her face.  Instinctively she let her tongue rest lightly for second on the yellowness of the thing.  She rotated the stem between her thumb and finger, to see it from every advantage, moved it up, then lowered it, to gaze at it from below and above.  Then she ate it, chewing it slowly, making it her own. 
As seen by a dying man:
 For fifty years, he’d fought a war with the dandelions.  He had plucked, poisoned and pissed on them; cursed, crushed, and castigated them, until, at age 70, he was ready to make peace.  He braced himself on the deck’s wooden rail, to descend one, two, then the third step leading to his unkempt lawn.   He stood a moment, until his breath slowed, and his heart ceased its erratic pounding.   He knew his daughter would not approve this venture.  He heard her anxious voice even now telling him that he could fall, and no one would know.    Fine, he thought.  He would prefer to die on the lush lawn he had tended most of his life.  When he reached the solitary sentinel, he looked down on it, aware of his god-like stance.  Yet, he sensed the dandelion finally had the upper hand.
As seen by a prom Queen
He’d given her the dandelion wordlessly, the soft energy of his eyes reaching into her own, telling her the secret between them.   She wanted to kiss him, to hold his face against her breast, to hold his hand again as they had when they were children.  One of her saffron robed attendants stepped into their space, before she could speak.   “You don’t want to be seen with him,” she said, unconcerned that he heard her.  “Get rid of that thing,” she added on seeing the dandelion in her hand. Another attendant pushed a bouquet of roses toward her.  “We’re due on stage.” 
o    
When she arrived home that night, she pulled the dandelion from her bodice.  Its tubular stem was crushed, and its delicate yellow rays twisted.  She laid it on her armoire as she might an injured child.  Looking into her mirror, she studied the coiffed hair, the plucked eyelashes, the pearl necklace, the red glare of lipstick against the starkness of her bloodless cheeks.  Raising her two hands with the same regal care as she had been crowned, she lifted the tiara, and dropped it into the trash.