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A Daughter’s Project / Getting over a Suicide 

 

A daughter is supposed to be cherished,

saved like the white gardenia for fear 

of bruising its delicate petals. She is tender

 

as the scent that travels behind her mother’s 

ear where all handpicked flowers should live.

But sometimes she arrives in her mama’s suitcase, 

 

leftover like the midnight sandwich on the bedside

table, postscript or the moon’s reflection on glass. 

There’s a reckoning that happens when a marriage 

 

is over. A crass litany of things to share, the amicable

parting if everyone’s graciously aware. But oh

when a parent has died, there’s an unfinished 

 

debt for the nearly orphaned child. So I crawled

inside my mother’s baggage unknowing

a space could be so dark. I cried when the latch 

 

was untied and a spark of light entered through 

the keyhole mirrored in my mother’s eyes. 

Another day, she would say and primp 

 

my pinafore with a sash of crinoline ties 

But most lies are said in silence. I wear a family 

heirloom; a golden locket around my neck, 

 

my amulet filled of memories, cloudy dreams 

of hope that people never really die. Even so, 

I am the remnants of a father I used to know,

 

who momentarily forgot the scent of gardenias  

behind my mother’s ear and the handpicked 

flower that lived there, so very long ago.

 

 

 

 

BIO, PAGE 2

When you’re Most Lost 

 

Remember how you curled yourself 

deep in the womb of a mattress, the way 

you once slept safe in the hollow 

of your mother’s belly; a little being 

waiting to be born?.

 

Remember when you wore the light

from the chandelier like an angel’s 

nimbus, your head held high, arms 

raised for wings where no gale or breeze 

could take you down?.

 

Remember when you layered petals 

from the rose of peace above the lawn

in garden soil and pressed your head 

on the flower’s corolla until you could

feel the beauty of spring?

 

Today you laid down in mourning

on graveyard grass listening for the beat

of your mother’s heart; your ear pushed 

hard in the meadow’s green veil…

Heaven exists in the easy pause 

 

of nothing.