1.
It is almost springtime and my mother has begun her faithful work
of turning the world inside out. She fills our kitchen bay window
with plants and plants—basil, lilies, mint, one tall purple orchid.
See it like a still-life: woman and flower, woman as flower.
My mother leaning over the seedlings to count leaves
like the breaths of her sleeping children. Fingertips turn over
dark soil. They are barely children anymore, she knows.
Already the kitchen is quiet except for the green hum
of her plants, the grief-work of their soft throats.
2.
An article in the newspaper’s living section explains how to make a space your own. It is implied that then, it will feel like home. The house in the photo is spacious and cloud-colored, surrounded by citrus trees. The caption lists details—scruffy lawn, salvaged wood, sea thrift flowers. Inside: an assemblage of things. Meaningful attachments.
Last year, my sister and I cleaned out the home of a great-aunt who had just passed away. We went room by room, leaving each one dismantled and neatly catalogued: Books, Hand-me-downs, Dish towels, Silver. The last room was the kitchen. It was May, so we propped the windows half-open as we knelt on tiled floor, sorting cups and gold-rimmed china. I nestled dishes in moving paper and shut each cabinet quickly. I couldn’t bear to look at the empty shelves, the kitchen emptied and hanging open like a ribcage.
3.
Once I saw a woman dancing on a street corner,
arms gliding like snakes, hands grasping
and pulling the air like ribbons. As I passed, I tried to see it
as she did—the sky, rippling. I remember her in strange moments:
driving, in line at the pharmacy, folding clothes
into neat piles. Each time, I wonder why she appears,
why I suddenly imagine her fingers pulling the world apart
and weaving it into something air-filled and lovely.
We find ways of preserving even what we don’t want to remember.
Online, I click through photos—blue masks stitched into art,
cotton artifacts that look like flowers.
4.
I come home to a house that feels emptier
than I remember. My parents are on the porch,
still unaware that I’m here. Through the window
I take a photo of them—so close,
turned towards the scoop of ocean.
The air fitting to their bodies like water.
I wait inside for a moment, trying to preserve
this moment—my parents, alone, watching
as day hollows itself, prepares for night.
5.
The girl who lived in my bedroom before me left small proofs of her presence—
a teacup in the closet, a moon-shaped chip in the door, a wool sweater
(crumpled and too small for me) underneath the bed. Remnants of her life,
her leavetaking. One by one, I claimed them all as my own.
I have learned that we are remembered by the things we leave behind—
pieces of self, small and glittering like glass. They collect, wind-blown, in the corners.
Now, I try to imagine what I will leave behind, the architecture of my existence.
I want even the walls to whisper it.