i thought that i liked buttercups. maybe it was because of that song (why don't you build me up BUILD ME UP buttercup baby) or maybe it was because the name sounded nice off my lips. or it might have been because i just wanted to like them, because they seemed so pretty and yellow and summery and i wanted to be pretty and yellow and summery. so maybe it was just envy. because i wasn't a buttercup. but i tried, oh did i ever. and i fooled a few, i think. but not me. never me.
anyway, it doesn't much matter, because i don't like buttercups anymore. i don't know if i ever did. i just thought so. and there is a difference.

my latest HE bought me a bouquet of buttercups, all neatly trimmed and with a plastic holder stamped with that organic grocer's slogan. i wanted to fling them on the cherrywood and crush them with my designer heels. "no," i wished i could say to him, yelling like the child i never was. "i don't want them. you don't know me. i don't know me. and i don't want the buttercups. i don't even like them."
but i couldn't because i had told him that i did.

you know what i really do like, though?
dandelions. i love dandelions. i want muddy, straggly, uneven dandelions pulled straight from the earth-- just for me. and then i can close my eyes and hold them tight and send a thousand little wishes to the edges of the sea.

after twenty three years and ten months of searching, i have realized that all i really want is something to believe.