title: The Sunflower Principle: Life Lessons from a Simple Flower
author: Donna Austin
description: Donna Austin, a native of Jonesboro, Arkansas, also lived in the Dallas area for thirty years. She has two children and four grandchildren. Donna has been published by Argus Communications in Allen, Texas, and featured in Guideposts Magazine. Her poetry has been published in Amidst the Splendor - The National Library of Poetry. Donna is the Director of Writers' Ink, a creative writing group of Jonesboro, and a member of the National League of American Pen Women.
zlib_text: Things
  I Learned
  in the Night
   
   
   
  Emily Juniper
   
   
   
   
   
  
   
   
   
   
   
   
  Copyright 2018 by Emily Juniper  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  
   
   
  
   
   
  Our bodies are our gardens
   
  to which our wills are gardeners.
   
   
  -Othello
  Shakespeare
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  
   
  
  I have a whole world tucked
  away in my closet; sepia
  colored memories
  of my parents in the eighties,
  ticket stubs from movies I don’t remember
  because I was too busy exploring the mouth of a
  boy I do,
  and crinkled petals from a golden sunflower that
  said you still love me.
   
  And though you haven’t come back yet, I
  know you will,
  because sunflowers
  never lie.
   
   
  Sunflowers Never Lie
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  
   
   
  
   
   
   
  We watched the horizon
  as the evening sun spun the clouds
  into sugar pink and baby blue.
  It was then
  that your thigh grazed
  mine for the first time,
  just one day in mid- July
  but it felt infinite like we
  were as never
  ending as the cotton candy
  sky.
   
   
  Cotton Candy Sky
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  