1.

In my house, one room looks onto another,

and another. In the last, my bedroom,

the window holds a chicken-wire fence,

a stutter of fresh leaves, the neighbor’s

corrugated metal roof.

Yesterday I wept there,

could not get beyond the bed covers.

I remembered a childhood game

in which my cousin and I

held tight to the edge of my mattress,

pretending there were sharks below,

waiting to nip off a finger, a toe.

The sharks are bigger now,

more plentiful, real.

2.

Did you know that

I couldn’t find you in my house, Mama?

I searched for you, front door to chicken-wire fence;

you were not there.

3.

Today, with the help of pills, or faith,

or love, or whatever, I got out of bed.

As a reward, treat (bribe), I bought myself flowers,

parrot tulips: great pink creatures with green stripes.

They bloom from an old spaghetti-sauce jar,

huge fleshy petals like curled hands slowly opening,

drawing me curious into their sexual parts,

the ones whose names I never learned. No matter.

I love the way flowers live so splendidly just before they die.

Cut from their roots, they open still. Right here in my house.

No one could stop them.