Hanahaki disease is is a fictional illness born out of Japanese shōjo manga. It describes a condition where someone suffering from unrequited love coughs up or vomits flower petals or even entire flowers.
I saw my words settle in the moist air on that gray sky afternoon,
The whistling whipping wind paying no mind to all that I have bottled up.
She wiped her sickly pink eyes and I sighed.
“Stop crying,” I said firmly, and She’s hanging onto every
Vowel and consonant I speak,
“The disease is set in stone. You couldn’t cure me anyway.”
The thing is, She’s really not at fault for this.
She’s someone I’ve known since elementary school and paid no attention to.
It hit me, just recently, with no rhyme or reason.
And my heart pulsed more and more driving me into resentment.
I notice everything about the way She exists now -
The brown hair into ringlets like a spiral staircase she wears,
Dark, dark eyes She follows my being with,
Medium brown skin without a blemish. The complete opposite of me.
Medium brown skin scarred with stretch marks on my curves,
Black locs adorned with threads of blue, pink, purple, white, grey,
Eyes an amber brown, but with this pain they’ve lost color.
I didn’t expect this nor was I sure I even wanted this but I was stuck with this.
Not just the feelings sinking into my bone marrow, the
Coming from my stomach in ravenous starvation.
The disease was brand new, diagnosed days ago.
This inability to feel oxygen in my lungs, the quench for thirst that only burns,
Losing taste to every delicacy because it doesn’t match up to the one in front of me,
The petals forcing me to chew on their silk, suck on the pollen, feeling the stems in my gums.
So She gets to be stuck with the aftermath. I don’t ache about that (I tell myself that).
So yes I went to the house She sleeps in every night to reveal a nightmare.
She’s at the door on the other side the same time I knock with my knuckles.
Hearing the screen door go fwack fwack fwack until the door swings open.
She thought I was only coming to pass on notes from todays class She missed.
That’s not the only thing I came to pass on though.
The moment She sees me all surprised at the banging, I release what’s inside of me.
Lilies fly out of my mouth, white tips coursed with blood of my lifeline
Pouring onto the flowerbed when I turn to puke up what’s inside me.
She’s frozen, lips trembling in anxiety.
She saw how I stumbled words in our conversations out of nowhere,
Noticed my inner glee sitting next to her in class for the whole year,
How my looks were filled with more longing than simple acknowledgement -
The signs were there. Now it’s too late.
I wiped my mouth. Then I said what I said.
Then another lily clawed its way up my throat yet again with a wet gurgle and
Popped out of my mouth, leaving shreds of soft tissue from my cheek in my mouth.
It floated between us slowly descending to the ground in front of those feet
That will never walk intently towards me.
She slowly reached down and scooped up the tinted lily
Mindful as a gardner is to their soil,
Holding it in an open palm.
My bitterness washed away at that scene, I was weakened at that moment.
I blink away my own tears and hand over the notebook and quickly said
Leaving that flower in that palm,
Hoping, once the disease finishes me off,
Flowers prompt by @moonknightmaiden @picklemafia
2025 Azure Jo Storm | All rights reserved. Reposting or reblogs of my poetry on this website is allowed with proper credit. Copy/paste and or reposting in any format on other websites is not allowed.
I also wrote a twin poem to this called Hanahaki - Her !
