Marchitó is the past tense of the verb marchitar, which means 'to wither' or 'to fade'. It's a beautiful, poetic word that you won't often hear in everyday conversation.
In this iconic song, Selena uses it as the central metaphor. She sings that the love he gave her, "como la flor... se marchitó" (like the flower... it withered), perfectly capturing the feeling of a beautiful love that has sadly faded away.
This is one of Selena's most famous songs, and it's a perfect example of how to handle a breakup with class, even when you're falling apart inside. The singer knows her ex has already found someone new. Instead of being angry, she says, "Si en mi no encontraste felicidad / Tal vez alguien más te la dará" [If you didn't find happiness in me / Maybe someone else will give it to you]. It's a beautiful, if heartbreaking, thing to say to someone who left you.
But the song's main idea is in the title line: "Como la flor / Con tanto amor / Me diste tú, se marchito" [Like the flower / with so much love / you gave me, it withered]. The love that was once alive and beautiful is now dead. She accepts this, saying "yo sé perder" [I know how to lose], but immediately follows it with the painful cry of "a-a-ay, cómo me duele" [oh, how it hurts]. She's putting on a brave face, but the pain of losing him is overwhelming.
Selena Quintanilla-Pérez grew up in Lake Jackson, Texas, fronting her family's band, Selena y Los Dinos, with her brother A.B. writing the songs and playing bass and her sister Suzette on drums. She was raised speaking English, and her father drilled the Spanish lyrics into her phonetically, line by line, years before she was fluent in the language she sold millions of records in.
Tejano was a men's business when she took it over: she won the Tejano Music Award for Female Vocalist of the Year nine years running from 1987, and Selena Live! took the 1994 Grammy for Best Mexican-American Album. "Como la Flor", from 1992's Entre a Mi Mundo, is the song attached to her name more than any other, and Amor Prohibido (1994) put four singles at number one on Billboard's Hot Latin Songs chart, among them "Bidi Bidi Bom Bom" and "No Me Queda Más". She was shot and killed in Corpus Christi on March 31, 1995, aged 23, by the former president of her fan club. Dreaming of You, the English-language crossover album she had been recording, was released that August and entered the Billboard 200 at number one.