Today's poem is by Alise Alousi

Forgiveness is the smell of crushed flowers
       

My mother crossed the street, quickened her pace
tried to avoid the sound of him calling her name.
The flower shop on her walk home from school,
streetside windows fogged. Elaborate dresses, flounce
or lace, wasn't her thing—my grandmother
pushed her toward him, gentleman shop-owner,
a reputation, thumb on the scale.

She knew the scientific words for things he took,
to her like dance, taught her to stepwise,
stepwide through curtain, doorway, until everything
fell, face to the ground, no glimpse of sky or sun
to bend toward, just metal grates, hiss of steam heat.
She focused on the flowers enclosed in paper
or petals skimming water in white tubs,
thought, can you lightly drown?

Too much beauty inhaled at once lands you
somewhere like a hospital, a closet
a sofa you can't get off, like old wood floors
that creak and sway, the penny dropped
ends its run—cornered, or circling the drain.
My mother still can't walk through a door
with a bell, a shop full of flowers, without the fear
of her name, cooed or whispered.

A master gardener now, fingers curled
and stiff, the only easing of their ache,
her opening fist beneath the dirt.

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Copyright © 2024 Alise Alousi All rights reserved
from What to Count
Wayne State University Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission