If you don’t already know their scent,
I can’t tell you. But who among us can
describe our mother’s musk
on a day when she has yet to bathe?

I invaded her bathroom
for that perfume bottle curved
like a woman about to have
her picture taken by her own child.

I held it up to my mouth
but did not dare pour.

*

In the soil of my childhood
home, my mother planted a garden
but refused to let me help her.

I watched her kneel to the earth,
wondering why she thought I might
steal her chance at burying
a seed in her own wet darkness.

She wanted to make things
struggle into beauty.
Was I not enough?

*

She repeated this process
every spring, then returned
to bed for the rest of the year.

One day I stepped into her garden
and laid down, submitting
to the row of red geraniums.
I have never belonged to anything

like I belong to her. I guess
we are all looking for a cure
for the thing we love
that has been torn apart.

*
Tonight I beheaded
every living flower,
climbed to the top
of the slick stairs

and lay the blooms
so that their faces
faced her. Her chin,
her ribs, her hips, her knees
and the feet she used

to stomp in that same room,
right before I came
into the world, split her open
as she begged for it to stop.