Margaret Warriner Buck, Wild Peony, from The wild flowers of California; their names, haunts, and habits by Mary Elizabeth Parsons, 1902
Courtesy of the Biodiversity Heritage Library
They just can’t seem to split their father’s pills straight along the score, though they cleaved
a eucalyptus leaf right against the stem, and amputated their sentences
to save what’s left of their language. They sped home from the hospital
with no headlights, no moon—noticed neither. Not a single star scabbing the sky.
They should try harder to prescribe presence. To clot their gaze around what’s precious.
Each evening, they inject his bedside with peonies, until the smell almost induces spring.
They try to make bouquet rhyme with tourniquet. They leave the house
for the first time in days and they mistake a man’s catcalls
for owl-song. They mistake their hand for their mother’s.
Dizzied and alone, they mistake their father’s dying for their own. They diagnose the space
between birth and death as a symptom. Maybe that was a seizure, maybe it wasn’t.
He wants his body back. Once in a while, they let themselves
metastasize memory into the present. The consequences of which have been cured
by his prognosis. When the time comes, it’s recommended they bandage all the mirrors.
For now, they will endure daily transfusions of the future, increasing slowly in potency.
If only they would try to soothe his pillowcases while they still can.
If only they would deliver the pink narcotic like a miniature newborn into his waiting hands.
If only they could discharge every bone in their body that requires a father.
If only they were a daughter
without a string of plurals around their neck.
They swallowed the incorrect dosage of apology. They sipped pharmacy fluorescence to stay awake.
They remain unaware of their inflamed attachment styles, manually deteriorating
their optimism. But, there is a methadone to the madness. The aloe allows its edema,
the bougainvillea blooms, limbs un-lacerated. Their coping strategies are granted
an Emergency Use Authorization. They are inoculated with twilight, sugar water, pickled crescents.
Side effects include: Hummingbirds. Dust storms. Sleeplessness. Surrender.
It’s nearly dawn. Through the crack in the door, they watch him breathe.
There are no cures for his cancer
nor for being his daughter.
Relentless teeming, a belonging that spreads, right down to the bones.