Ode to a pepper plant

Moist dew envelopes the sweet scent of fresh life, sweeping through my lungs, dripping, seeping in reflective globes down crinkled green sprouts. The droop of creamy white buds teeter from their precarious lifelines, falling to the damp dull jaggedness of earth to give way for their precious successors. Bright veins finger across smooth open teardrops, absorbing the dim warmth of concealed sunlight as I brush my hand across their skin. Scrunched in glistening valleys of spice, holding in burnt tongues and blasts of fragrance, the hidden green of curved, fresh fingers unfold into maturity. They hang in full weight from the striving limbs of stemmed strength and leathery gracefulness that forever reach towards the remembered sun.