When did water get so wet
so viscous and sure of itself?
Heavy, like a big loogie rattled, hocked,
from the back of your mother’s throat and into the stiff flesh of
your ear.
It’s already rained today—all dew no sky.
Look up. All flower no tree.
Collected droplets pooling in the cupped hands of white magnolias to
fall like the
severed bulge of damp nerve dangling above the base of your tongue.
Rain gathered by a flower lands exactly where it intends
and you revel in the comfort of this knowing
The sky is too big, clouds too fickle.
You call this bloom mother, and in that name is good,
but what if I told you it was your father’s throat?
