Flower

            Another banishment

of-the-eldest-son story, he says

            he was the coal burning

his family’s hatred,

            the son who wouldn't stay

for his mother's madness.

He walked with the mute girl

            out of the locked ward

one summer afternoon into a field

            where she looked

in slow motion, pointed to the hills

            and sun, bent

down to finger one blade of grass,

            then another. She picked

a daisy.

            Flower, she said.

Then

he took her back

locked her in.