Sometimes She slipped
or slid her questing stems
beneath my sister’s skin.
I knew the change was afoot
when my sister
took off her patent leather shoes
and crept down to the brook.
I would stand behind her,
my cheek imbedded in the mossy
waist coat of an old oak,
as she lowered her sleek shoes
past the miniature
gardens of maple seedlings
taking root on the muddy rocks,
into the sun warmed water.
I would watch as the shoes
grew patent leather scales
and obsidian black tails
before they swam away.
When She planted herself
behind my sister’s eyes,
my sister’s speech bloomed.
With each word
the rhododendron flowers,
woven out of the pale pink
river mist, stored from morning,
floated off her tongue.
A single sentence
changed the dusty avenues
of tattered azaleas and dandelions
in the backyard garden
into corridors of emerald mystery.
I was told stories
and believed each translucent morsel
of home grown fantasy
She dropped in my mouth.
The stories were new,
tightly clenched forsythia buds
that blossomed long after the hearing,
or ripe petunia red currant tales
that clung to tongue and mind,
but were quickly forgotten.
Sometimes in the height
of those leafy fabrications,
She would blow out of my sister
and join the brown tangles
of wind born oak pollen.
My sister would sit,
momentarily puzzled,
drumming grass stained fingers
on the formerly gilded rock throne.
Then, glancing at the shoes
lying at the brook bottom
or flapping listlessly on the shore,
she would laugh. |
Submission Name: The Flower Queen
