Garland Girl

June 7, 2012

published in on the cusp's magazine "cycle" Summer 2012

Garland Girl

My sister, she sits on her summer swing, dressed in red,

the wind making her skirts billow, and all the cotton

seeds drift and scatter.  it seems like something more

should be happening, as she clutches a handful

of faded white daisies, flowers from her youth.

she stares off at the coming autumn, as I stare at this photograph

of her.  Years ago, she used to photograph

everything, especially the valerians in their dying reds,

the ancient daisies as they lost what youth

they had.  She’d sit by the foot of the poplars in a cotton

dress, watching summer disappear just like the handful

of dusty petals she held.  She would say, no more

are the days of sun and daisies.  And no more

were her days of sundresses and songs.  The photographs

she’d taken she burned until all that remained was a handful

of ashes and aged coals, the embers left burning red

only in her eyes as she watched the snow come down like cotton

quilts over the earth, like down plucked from goslings in their youth.

She longed for something golden or green, for the youth

of saplings as they stretch up to the sun, needing more and more

every day.  She wanted once again to dance through the cotton

fields as they spread their seeds.  Like a postcard photograph

the poppies would all bloom, gold and violet and red,

and their pollen would cling to her hair and her dress, a handful

of summer fairy dust.  In the long winter nights she had her hands full

of old daisy chains and pressed petals, stripped of youth

by january’s chill.  One by one, she pasted them all onto little red

valentines, her fingers shaking and tired, until she had more

hearts and dead flowers than she could count.  No photograph

could keep them alive, as no enchantment of the sun could keep the cotton

from blowing away in the wind.  While the world was draped in a cold cotton-

white she sat resigned, but in march was she ever a handful!

when the first green appeared in the snow, slowly showing through like a photograph

developing, her body remembered all the wildness and youth

it had lost when the leaves fell and the flowers wilted.  She needed more

of the life she saw growing, digging through snow and earth until her hands bled red.

Growing with the cotton, changing with the seasons of youth,

living and dying as inevitably as a handful of daisies; it’s hard to tell anymore,

but in this photograph, as we sit on her summer swing, our lips are stained red, red, red.