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“Do flowers mourn?”
--Linda Pastan, Traveling Light
Outside your castle I get lost: purple coneflowers,
the pop of black-eyed Susans, cup plants that hold
rain, bee balm, blazing stars, lavender irises, lilacs,
giant golden sunflowers. I am a mermaid growing
pollinators on my chest, with flowers instead
of breasts. I am no longer a nude pygmy.
I clutch my necklace, a small iron anchor.
My new legs stab like swords. I am overboard
on your music, my prince, drunk on longing
and brine, listening to your guitar riffs.
I have swallowed some of the sky and sun,
captured a jar of light, spread it onto the stars.
I hide in the nautilus of your heart, but Cancer’s
hook cut the corner of my mouth and I have lost
all sense of time, tasting only blood and metastasis.
I stop to smell a wild rose, finger a Joe Pye weed,
wink at butterfly bushes. I don’t remember anything
of Cancer’s rape, but its fruit grows in my womb.
Will I return to the sea? I don’t know. I spread my arms,
close my eyes, feel the presence of hummingbirds drinking
nectar, finches as they feed on seeds. I miss saltwater,
the way seaweed tangled in my hair, how I embraced
foam like Aphrodite, my tail glittering as I swam.
But how can I ever leave your garden? Can I even
question a love so blue it transcends time? I reach
inside, shove Cancer’s fetus deep under rock, then dive
into the sea and swim towards the father of my tumor,
a pirate who trapped me deep below in darkness.
Your flowers will fade, my prince, like a sandcastle
washes away. But the perennials come back.
I, too, will reappear in foam and flora,
surfacing always to listen to your music.
Caroline Johnson has two poetry chapbooks and a full-length collection, The Caregiver (Holy Cow! Press, 2018). Nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, she won the Chicago Tribune’s Printers Row 2012 Poetry Contest. Her poetry has been featured on Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. Visit her at www.caroline-johnson.com.
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