To the flowers in my grandmother’s garden
Why do you not smell
as sickly as you did when
my hair was braided
with pink ribbons from the Dollar
Store? Coconut lotion
infiltrates nostrils as
my grandmother plaits
my hair, tying off
the ends with rosebud satin.
The ribbons come
from the sewing kit [cookie tin] nestled
in the hutch under the boxy
television, like the one my mother
let me watch when I paired socks
on her floor. Cheap fabric
and wool. My fingers fray
with split-end thread.
My grandmother
pulls weeds from her garden. Goldenrod
hides behind swollen lupines. Tulips burst
from sticky stems and bend ever
so slightly over the marigold patch. Everything
smells like citrus and summer and little
girl evenings on a too-big boat in a too-
small bay. My grandmother’s cubic
zirconium ring flashes next
to a white rose. The reflection
is skewed.
She keeps her
diamond, small and young, hidden
upstairs in the redone master. She
presses the fabrics in her closet
to her nose. Smells artificial,
counterfeit lily. Lets her body fold
into the California king, breathing
over the bay. The pink carpet my
grandparents tore up rots
somewhere. Far away. My mother
inhales purple crocuses. Perhaps
flowers die. Perhaps it is
spring.
Zoe LaVallee is a senior English and adolescent education major at SUNY Geneseo. She has recently been rediscovering her love of poetry, and is now struggling to stop spitting out words.