What They Said
I once bought an Ellen Bass book for my mother—the one where her mother is dying
all through the pages and my mother said, Geez, it’s all about sickness and old age.
I hadn’t seen the topic for the beauty. I should have gotten her Mary Oliver and
she could have been pleased with the egrets, crickets, not understanding their beauty
was also telling the story of sickness and old age. My mother, who liked to say
of my writing, It didn’t happen that way, dear. Who tried to love the world through
her logic. Mary Oliver was still alive back when I didn’t buy her book for my mother;
so was my mother. But now they are both gone, though it still matters what they said.
*
Changing States
Confession: I have not protected everything
I’ve wanted to protect. Confession:
people think I know something about plants
but I just like their company.
In the sun, which is sometimes shade,
the patience of water waiting to lift away
as a gas. Patio plants, slow in the cold,
shimmer next to puddles. Attempts
to control what grows. My failures—dark holes.
When I was 9, my friends gave me
a teddy bear because I was moving.
I didn’t understand my life
was about to take a different direction
far from them in another state. What is home
at that age? Shame
hadn’t been parsed out yet,
was one giant blob of pain stuffed
into the scuffed & alone part of my little body.
Confession: most days I don’t expect the best
of people. Confession: I’ve always wanted a twin.
I once bought a garden decoration
at a flea market—a large wooden heart
spray-painted half in subtle gold,
the other half covered in shabby chic
rusted metal. Stenciled on the wood: HOME IS.
Another woman also wanted it, though
I’d asked about it first. She said,
You can have it, but her eyes added,
fucking bitch. Each morning I collect
the snails that hide behind the heart,
move them to the dandelion patch
next to the trash. Confession:
sometimes I fling them over the fence.
Confession: sometimes the things with roots
I’m responsible for watering
are all that get me up in the morning.
Confession: I’ve been disappointed in every one
of my birthdays since I was 9. Confession:
Christmases, too.
*
Kathryn Petruccelli is a Pushcart-, Best of the Net-, and Best Small Fictions-nominated writer with roots in spoken word. She holds an obsession with the ocean and an MA in teaching English language learners. You can find her work in places like the Massachusetts Review, the Southern Review, ONE ART, West Trestle Review, Fictive Dream and SweetLit. She teaches online, pay-what-you-can workshops, and produces and hosts the podcast Melody or Witchcraft, where guests discuss an Emily Dickinson poem and one of their own along with the relevance of past writing to today’s issues. More at poetroar.com / melodyorwitchcraft.com.
Terrific poems.