POETRY

By Marisa Lainson

Every year she kills it, the orchid.
I take comfort in this ritual, a riot
of purple starved to bones. Sweet
is the inevitabil­i­ty of her neglect.
In girl­hood, I worked to emulate
the shapes of her: the sharp wrists
and hips, the hol­lowed dips in her
clav­i­cle. My mother hasn’t always
fed herself well. She taught me all
the words I know for grace, filled
my plate with summer plums, the
invi­ta­tion of hot, olive-dark bread.
She never wanted small­ness of me.
Every morning, I watched her curl
her lashes, smooth her silk collar
flat, and I can perform these rituals
too, now, without a mirror. I starve
my flowers of nutri­ents though not
of light. The orchids, of course, are
purple words for grace. Dry petals
blanket the whole kitchen table in
for­give­ness, which to me always
tastes a little bit del­i­cate, bruised.

Photo by Tim Mossholder.

This story orig­i­nal­ly appeared in Stonecoast Review Issue 19. Support local book­sellers and inde­pen­dent pub­lish­ers by order­ing a print copy of the mag­a­zine.