Wallflowers

The cute, fun little poem "Wallflowers" by Donna Verreyer appears to be about words. She uses personification to make the words have humanistic qualities to ensure a connection with the audience. Many readers can sympathize with the lonely, "tired," "poor" words that "no one speaks."
In the beginning of the poem she talks about how she "heard a word I'd never heard before" automatically bringing the audience in - I know I've heard words I had no idea what they meant! Yet instead of perhaps ignoring the word, or looking at the definition but soon forgetting, she "let it know it was loved" with her pen.
She continues on to introduce the idea that people can own words by saying them three times. I never thought about a word being mine and this made me think about if I own any words.
In the third stanza Vorreyer compares the words to "hollow-eyed orphans in Dickensian bedrooms." The change in tone draws my attention and I think about how maybe the poem is a metaphor for homeless, orphan items, or even people! She continues to explain how the unknown words "wait patiently, shy shadows at the high school dance." This draws my attention to the title - Wallflowers. A wallflower is (by dictionary.com definition) "a person who, because of shyness, unpopularity, or lack of a partner, remains at the side at a party or dance." These words are wallflowers by definition - they "wait bitterly" for someone to discover them, to turn them from the unknown into the known.
At the end of the poem the author does what she says she wants to do and gives the two words, gegenshein and zoanthropy, a home. She "helps" the two words by putting them out into the world; some people who read her poem will be curious to figure out what gegenshein and zoanthropy mean and now if not more, at least one person knows about the two forgotten words.
My interpretation of the poem was a light way to express real, raw feelings about being useful versus being useless. I really like the poem and I think it resonates deeply with audiences who read it because they can relate to how the words "feel".