WE’VE BEEN READING THE STORY WRONG

My mother grew a garden

Surrounded by lockets of Ivy

And she would say,

“The Ivy is for the Wives.

It clings to the walls, takes root in the soil,

And can survive any kind of storm.”

And in the rows of flowerbeds,

Each story grows,

Yearning for no more than a gentle hand

To knead its soils and soothes its toils,

And my mother would say,

“Carnation is for the Mothers,

And their boundless love.”

Then she’d crush some Yarrow for my scraped knees,

Trace her thumb along the bones of my spine,

Picking at the crinkled Marigold

With a fleshy grin,

And say,

“For all the Daughters,

Hearts dripping,

Precious as any ore.”

As she held out her arms and crawled

Towards the meadow beneath my toes

She would say,

“The Poppies are for the Beasts,

Not the ones that lurk beneath beautiful skin,

The ones with the ravenous roars.”

And then we’d stretch our backs over grandmother’s soil

And watch the old Oak tree spread its rooted wings across the gardens fold,

And my mother would say,

“Remember, little one,

These women sit in your palms as the dirt clings to the earth,

And they wait for you to tell their stories.”

And that is when I would ask her,

“But Mother Gaia,

How will I know when their stories are ready?”

All she did was smile.

“You will know.

So don’t let their stories go.”