The Bowed Green Willows Poem by Anuhaaa Su

Sometimes, we are like the bowed green willows,
Admired by others for our beauty—
Our lush greenery, our graceful, hanging branches—
Yet no one sees the weight we bear.

Beneath that pressure, we quietly endure,
Spending a lifetime bent and weary,
Until we die—
Never even realizing it.

In our lives,
We too are burdened with unnecessary things,
Forced to follow the paths society sketches,
Not the passions burning quietly within us.

We struggle through a life
Mapped by culture, tradition, and religion,
Blind to the fact that we're losing
The most rare and precious gift of all—
Life itself.

And with these thoughts,
My own spirit began to wither.
In the end, what did I find?
A beautiful graveyard full of flowers—

But alas,
It was only my dead body
That stopped to enjoy them.