split earth’s rotting wound. your body,
a mausoleum hanging over its lip—
like a made thing. plucking flowers

on our walks, you study them close,
stumbling over your brand-new feet.
they’ll die before we make it home,

i don’t say. you are a botanist
& know all about self-
preservation. know there is no grey

in death—& you are very much alive

I grew a rose within a garden fair,
And, tending it with more than loving care,
I thought how, with the glory of its bloom,
I should the darkness of my life illume;
And, watching, ever smiled to see the lusty bud
Drink freely in the summer sun to tinct its blood.

My rose began to open, and its hue
Was sweet to me as to it sun and dew;
I watched it taking on its ruddy flame
Until the day of perfect blooming came,
Then hasted I with smiles to find it blushing red —
Too late! Some thoughtless child had plucked my rose and fled!

^{After Robert Minervini’s “Improvised Garden II (Water Street)”}

more and more of my friends

are becoming parents or partners

to plants

i have lived long and short enough

to remember the homegirls who

danced non-stop until three a.m.

the moon a parabola to our party

i’ve grown up enough

to see them sing their favorite slow songs

to herbs and succulents on their windowsills

in homes they sowed from dreams

the same sister who once dug a heel into

a man’s oblique now steals thyme with me

off of suburban bushes after brunch

in my neighborhood

when a friend locked herself out—

the same person who loses wallets &

laptop chargers & saves my broken earrings

with a hot-glue gun in her backpack—

this pinay macguyver

has me breaking into her house at night

where we be tiptoeing over her

forest of planted avocado jars

into her dark room to find warmth

the one whose living room and bedroom

once resembled a flea market  

or a super fly thrift store

and sometimes ikea—

the one who let me stay

she pays full price for potters &

vases—pronounced with the short

& therefore expensive ‘a’ sound

one womxn named her garden

“grown and sexy”

bringing new meaning

to the phrase garden hoe.

another who tops burritos with

white sauce dots like queen anne’s lace

also commits the crime of eating

one half at a time, you know, meal planning

with a sweet tooth, she drinks all of her horchata

& knows how

my family loves orchids &

she brings me them for my birthday

or any other tuesday

just because.

my mentee once congratulated me with

mint & basil & lavender & rosemary—

sweet aromas gifted when i

was leaving a job that left me to rot

for another that was not  an office

with no windows, no green

the women in my life reroot

over oceans & provinces & planes to cultivate

a geography of trunks & limbs

reminding me that to decompose

is the chance to live again

my mother’s rose bushes open wide this spring

in her backyard without her

my mother’s body is buried in a plot

of other bodies without mine

isn’t a cemetery a garden

of all we’ve loved?

and isn’t a garden full

of already dead things?

those who bury their beloved

put the gentlest parts

of themselves into soil

my mother is a seed

    the first woman i cannot unplant

       cannot pull or twist back into my hands

her orchids bloom reaching

how delicately the petals hang off

their stakes like gold, glass bangles on wrists

against disco lights   against the ambiance of a food truck menu

like lip gloss    how bougainvillea spill onto sidewalks

like how the sun stays lit

during an eclipse

the flowers in my garden grow lively

& loving & hungry from pods & cinderblocks

my friends are florists

they water & cry & bloom & sleep

from loss & clay & unfolded laundry

sometimes we grow tired & tough

sometimes you have to open a cactus   to cut

pieces off so we don’t grow stuck

arranging the flowers

in my garden

is a lattice

a life lesson

on how

to grow

up.

Love in a garden of poppies
Playing at living life,
Love with smiles in her speech,
Love dancing at dawn
In a garden of flushed pink poppies.

Love, unsmiling now,
At noon in the garden of poppies,
With a laugh under her eyelids,
Fear deep in her eyes,
And tangled with her hair,
Sighs and a struggling joy.

Love, with a dim, strained face,
At night in the garden of poppies,
Her lips crushing the bloom
From the fairest flower there.
Love drunk with the wine
She has drawn from the poppy’s heart:
Love with death at her breasts.

Love at the end of night
Shaded by drooping poppies;
Love with scattered hair
And strange stains on her lips.
Love with death at her breasts.