Sometimes in Late October

after you have cleaned the rental lodge

in the Hocking Hills,

you and your friend walk

the half mile to Lake Logan,

on those few,

perfect

fall days

when wind blows

yellow and orange leaves

in a cyclone around you

and all you want to do

is close your eyes,

listen to the rustle,

smell the dusty,

almost nutmeg-y scent

of a pile of leaves

raked just so,

and it is warm enough

that you've stripped off

your late mother's favorite flannel shirt,

the one you took from the closet

the morning after she died,

refused to wash for months,

until even when you breathed

as deeply as she could not at the end,

nothing of her remained,

and even though watching

lotus invade

and choke Lake Logan of oxygen

makes you remember

how your mother said

it hurt to breathe,

cursed your father

for putting the oxygen mask back on her,

you walk up the hill,

past your favorite small cabin,

the one with the tilted dock,

soaking in the conversation

and the way light reflects

from the water's surface,

those tiny ripples

from a boat

that passed a half mile away,

ripples throwing sparks of light

into the blameless blue sky.

You wish your mother

had given up bourbon,

eaten even when she didn't want to,

had not said horse shit when told about

respiratory rehab.

Wish that you could have reached in

and torn out the lungs that did not work,

given her new ones,

made her breathe.

///////

Peonies

At the blue house on Mulberry Street,

I am 10 and

mother says that the ants help open the buds—

black on palest pink,

peonies hanging through the fence

from the neighbor's yard,

Brad, who once climbed the giant pine

in the front yard to rescue our kitten,

stuck and crying for most of a day.

He stuffed her inside his shirt

to leave his hands free to climb,

five pounds of pissed off and scared.

By the time he got down,

the blood soaked through the chambray,

Tell Ginger to use cold water on that,

mother said,

after thank you, of course.

She was polite, if a little distant.

They were neighbors but not friends.

That summer,

mother’s knife slipped

and when she peeked under the kitchen towel,

slowly blooming red,

she hissed and said swears I had never heard,

told me to run and get Brad because

our one car was with my dad at work.

Hours later she trudged the mile home

from the ER in Lancaster, Ohio,

shoulders defeated.

At dinner, dad puts a vase of peonies on the table in apology,

an apology that ends with black ants all over the uneaten food.

My mother cleans up,

stitched hand wrapped in white gauze,

cries in the kitchen for the second time that day.