Day Zero
In every morning-after apology,
my mother carries the old garden inside.
Clipping the rose hips from their shriveled
stems, she will re-root
them in the earth’s guts
not unlike the changing of diapers.
As if we are young
again, we hope for rebirth;
buds swelling
opening like an embrace.
I’ll rake her in;
her skin untouched and raw,
the early
dust scattering like night beetles,
everything breaking
with light.
In these moments, she’ll trace circles
on my palms
as though she is untangling
the thicket of roses;
dethorning the cuticles
on my fingernails.
She’ll tell me there is nothing
beautiful about addiction.
And I know,
I know. In the hunger
of her grief, her body is nothing
but knuckles
and bones in my side.
We fear only cycles.
The flimsy
whistle in I'm Sorry;
her tongue breaking the center
of the vowels.
The kitchen walls we’ll cover
again in white.
In the starting over,
The sunlight buckles through the shutters
Of this old stucco and plaster.
My mother always exhales in two billows,
The second heavier than the first.
Anastasia is a high school junior at the Westminster Schools in in Atlanta, Georgia. She is the head editor of her school’s literary magazine, Evolutions, and her work has been commended by Scholastic Art and Writing Awards as well as featured by the Hunger Magazine.