The “Lonesome Sunflower”: A Poem About Feeling Like You Don’t Belong

Have you ever felt like you didn’t belong in a community? Whether at work or school during your childhood, feeling out of place can be very challenging. The quest for friendship and acceptance often seems endless. A sunflower symbolizes this struggle. They are known for their tall growth and bright yellow petals, making them stand out in a field. Their vibrant color and long green stems make them hard to blend in. If you’ve ever wished for a place to belong, read this poem called ‘Lonesome Sunflower,’ which is about a sunflower trying to fit in as best as it can. 

There was once a lonely flower
One not like any others in her field
Though she was bright and glorious and glowed as the sun did,
The other flowers never accepted her as one of their own

She tried to find others of her kind
She stretched her stem as far as it would go
Peering over everybody’s heads
The other flowers thought that she was showing off

But the lonely flower, stretched as far as she could go, still couldn’t see anything that shone as bright as her
And all the other plants let her be; they didn’t want to be outshone by someone as dazzling as she
And so the shining flower cried shining tears that slid down her petals
She cried all day and all night
Wondering if she would ever find someone she was like

When morning came again
She looked up at the sun and pleaded with it
But the sun didn’t answer

As she bargained with the sun, a magpie flew by and was entranced with the flower’s gleaming petals

The magpie listened to her woes and offered the flower a deal
If she would give the magpie 47 of her petals, then he would fly all the way up in the sky, even higher than the sun, and he would look at all the fields below, for a flower with a radiating glow

So the magpie began to fly
And he soared higher and higher
Past the dull flowers and the towering trees
Past the grey clouds and all their silver linings
He looked down from above the clouds and saw only one glimmering flower in the fields below

So he flew higher
Past the flowing falls and the icy mountains
Past the sunrise and the sunset
Past the sun itself until the magpie reached the stars
Then he turned and looked upon the fields once more
But he saw nothing that the flower was hoping for
There was not a single flower in all the fields he could see
Not a single flower that gleamed as bright as she

So the magpie headed down

Past the sun and past the ice
Past the sunset and sunrise
Past the falls and past the treeTill he reached the flower and told her that there was no other like her
Why, if the magpie couldn’t see her family from up there
Was it possible her family wasn’t anywhere?

But a deal was a deal, no matter the outcome
So the flower began to pluck her petals one by one
She gave them to the magpie, and he flew away
She cried all morning and all night
Until she looked up at the sky and saw this bright, gleaming light

She looked up into the night, and what did she see?
She saw a flower as bright as she used to be
It was different from her, with dots instead of roots and a stem

She yanked on her roots and pulled them up from the ground
She pulled her roots out, then they started to wilt

The flower ran to the tallest tree she could find
And she climbed it to the very top of the tallest branch it had
And jumped up in the sky
For if this light were her family, it would catch her, right?

She reached the apex of her jump and started to descend

The lonely flower looked up at the sky to see only the stars staring back at her
The flower realized her mistake, and she yelled for the magpie
But she had given away all her petals, so she was invisible even to his bird’s eye

So she fell
She fell past the mountain and past the tree
Past the falls and the tall grass
Landing back in her field with a mighty thump

And so the flower’s body wilted, seeding back into the earth
And for a while, the field wasn’t as bright
Until a new flower arose, by the seeds in her corpse that night

Did you relate to this sunflower piece at all? Do you think this would make a good children’s story? Let me know in the comments below.

Featured image via Umberto Cancedda on Pexels