For Want of My Orchid

There was an orchid growing out my chest.
Right at the top of my breastbone, in that little dip between the clavicles.
The leaves were only four inches long, but the sprays of flowers curled between my breasts.
I miss it.

I understand it is hard to sympathize with dirt.  It seems that it's only alive on a microscopic level, and out of sight is out of mind.
But I walk.  I talk.  I breathe in the CO2 they breathe out.  I feed oxygen to their suffocating world.  Where I sleep, I feed the abused soil with humic acid and enzymes.
I was human, but now I am the opposite of human.

When they sent me to Tokyo 31, they took my orchid.  It would die in the high altitude, they said.  It wasn't true, of course.  I know why they took my orchid.
They did it to hurt me.

Every day, the spidery hole in my chest reminds me of the orchid roots that are gone.
Every night, the pain of loss makes me cry the pH of the Emperor's Garden just a little more into balance.