My Mother’s Flowers Rachel Lake
I spend the afternoon in my mother’s flower beds, dipping iris seeds into shallow holes, soil rich and black and peppered with worms. The blossoms will be full this year, because the dirt I used came from behind the shed where my father left the head of a deer to putrefy in the sun. Flesh falls to soil, to sprout, to flowers my mother cuts for the table. My mother sleeps as if she is praying, nails sprigs of dried lavender in every room. “Are your dreams too vivid?” She asks, reading the warning label on a bottle. My mother fell into depression again, slid into the well of it, then came up dripping and licking her fingers.
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