Then, everything was garnish, two kids and a house, a wife who kept the beds made, shirts ironed, secrets hidden like dust on the canned goods. What can’t be washed with vinegar— scum of the coffee pot—or set out in the sun with fresh linen my mother swears had to be ironed and I believe men made work for women, invented tile, starch, matrimony, and ama de casa to chop the tomato and lettuce sometimes in bowls, often on the side as adornment. What is the relationship between mother and daughter, tree and limb? The moment I say my memory is not of her sadness but of her laughter I’ve gotten it all wrong. The bright split of my birth was to a woman who wanted me to wear my decoration— a tree cleaned of its bark after a cool winter doesn’t forget its leaves. This poem appears in the April 2024 print edition. Source link