on frigid winter mornings,

you spend long hours in the graveyard of a garden, 

knee-deep in soil so brittle, no one believes in it anymore. 

this is where you plant the gnarled flower bulbs

you bought 75% off at store that’s going out of business next week. 

on the coldest mornings, you ask me to join you, 

and I never did. 

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nevertheless, 

come springtime, 

the sun radiates

the soil softens 

and the garden is reincarnated with daffodils and dahlias

once more. 

--------------

I have always yearned to pick these flowers, 

to put one behind each ear and dance barefoot on my own elation,

-----------------------

but you slap my naive hands away and scold me for daring to touch them.  

tell me that nature is the closest thing to god that we have on this earth, 

so I do not reserve the right to kill it. 

creation this exquisite is something you can only admire from afar

& I shouldn’t be so careless next time

tell me I do not get to reap the benefits 

of the beauty I do not sew.

 ----------------------

Mom,

I never joined you to plant on winter mornings, 

because I do not yet carry faith in that which I cannot see. 

your hands hold a patience mine never quite learned, 

and I don’t have your ability to trust when it’s cold. 

--------------------

when I arrange bouquets out of your craftsmanship,

I’m in awe of what you cultivate from nothing.

of what you grow in graveyards. 

-------------------------

lately, I’ve been falling in love with flowers, 

how they can be both perennial and impermanent,

of how they aren’t afraid to die. 

--------------------------

Aren’t you doing for them what you did for me once? 

before I was born, were you not sitting on the barren ground 

with nothing but your own blind conviction? 

-------------------------

I wish you knew that  

these flowers are the closest thing I’ve got

to an intersection between you, heaven and my hometown, 

so forgive me if I want to hold this in my left hand forever

if I want to put your strength in a vase on my windowsill every sunday 

------------------------

someday, 

I want to leave my restlessness and doubt on the dining room table, 

and join you in the garden, 

where the ghosts still sleep and the soil is still cracked 

I want to learn the art of planting flowers in the darkness with you 

our breath kissing the december air with anticipation of what this graveyard will be, 

come next year’s springtime.