Today's poem is by Donna Prinzmetal

Inflorescences
       

Once in a snowdrift of sleep
the sheet folded its crisp crease
like a heart looking in the cold for its twin.

I was not expecting anything.

Once in the hour between the storm
and my mother's dying voice,
I held my breath in the unlikeliest of dreams,
the absent syllables clustered
like marbles in my mouth.

Once where I live I gathered
evidence that I was loved:
the lingam the shape of an egg,
the Gilhoolie jar opener in the doodad drawer,
an overstuffed recipe box
with five different index cards
for cream of mushroom soup.

I gave my twenty-one-year-old daughter
Aladdin invitations I had bought
for her eight-year-old birthday party;
she was ecstatic.

Here in the cadence between pain's husky gasps,
the black wick sizzling like meat on the grill,
here in the hour between the scattering of salt
and the scattering of ashes, the departure

is a napkin left at the bar
folded into a white lily.
I was always alone
even when we were all here together.

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Copyright © 2024 Donna Prinzmetal All rights reserved
from Each Unkept Secret
MoonPath Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission