The Beauty and the Blood: F. C. Faura’s "Bougainvillea"

Poet F.C. Faura and poetry journalist Elias Lopez

By Elias Lopez

To love and to be loved is a challenging but rewarding experience, bringing with it many emotions that can be a beautiful yet brutal part of life. F. C. Faura manages to paint that picture in her poem “Bougainvillea.”   She draws in elements of her background and culture while telling a powerful story.

Coming from both Peruvian and Cuban descent, Faura was inspired to use the shared connection of bougainvillea flowers, which thrive in both countries, to display the themes of resilience and growth as they are reflected in both the flowers and in the narrator.

When asked, “Why bougainvillea?” Faura says, “It ties into the central meaning of the poem that love is resilient even when growing in an inhospitable environment.”

The poem was inspired by her own struggles with romantic love and her own experiences growing up. When asked why she wrote this poem in such a sweet yet gory way, she said, “even though I craved romantic love and the fairytale happily ever after, I also grew up with divorced parents, and friends that always seemed to be in bad relationships. Both experiences made me afraid of romantic love and made me prefer friendship, school, work, and family.”

However, it doesn’t end there, as Faura, like many of us, needed to grow and change.  She says, “for me my disinterest and block on romantic love is so deeply entangled with the core of who I am that allowing myself to grow felt like a horror story.  I needed to change; I needed to grow.”

This sentiment is one I think we all can understand, especially in romance. It’s one of those things in life that never really has a clear-cut answer, and we can only move forward by going through the trials and errors of life. Just like the blooming bougainvilleas bursting through soil in response to their own nature, we too must grow, even in the grimmest of situations.

In this poem, Faura looks into herself and works through her personal experiences with romance.  She also creates this wonderful, gory image of the bloody, blooming bougainvillea, painting a stark contrast that nevertheless perfectly expresses the pain of growth, of love, and of life itself.

Dotted bougainvillea against a green growing garden

Bougainvillea

By F. C. Faura

Love is like flowers 

Bursting and Ripping

Through your skin, against your will.

Its vines gripping your heart 

I can’t love you

It isn’t a desire I want

It is a fear I can’t break

My flesh decomposing

Wavering to your bloom

Your love, my resistance

The tar that paved over my young idealized heart breaks to you and your will to love me.

I am in love 

It is unwanted,

but kind and caring

Vivid painting of dotted bougainvillea against

A green growing garden.

Elias Lopez is an English major at the University of Bridgeport. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of the 2027 edition of Groundswell, UB's long-running magazine devoted to showcasing art and literature by UB students.