complaint as the mourning of spring

for Sylvia, October 10, 2020

Sylvia came and went with the last of her blooms. The roses were a bright pinkish red, the color of lipstick, the generic kind, the kind that children who desire girlness suck on, a cherry popsicle, to achieve.

When she began to say goodbye they were shifting peak, hoping towards the sky, sounding off to clouds about their humor, their blood centered color. There were so many, and she always counted, and protected, bone marrow, and shallow holding. They populated her world, friends in gray pandemic walls. Although,

Sylvia ignored covid to some extent. The news fell from tv to radio to Hannah to Gabbi to Germany to Honey to May Day to the ground where she soaked up the tragedy of her Bavarian memories. Why do I think red leather was the material of her dreams?

P dreamt about his mother last night, me sleeping with Judy, Mouffe waking through hard food chomping, him comforting May, her itchy pig skin, self soothing licks. In the morning he came to me like a child, “I dreamt of her, she was helping me construct something, helping me build, she was smiling”, Sylvia’s smile.

Being intentional about rose beds. And the leather they inhabit, the skins of cows and sheep. The milk in their eyes, the mothers they scream for, there isn’t much beyond that cry, and we all know that’s the only known. The loss of mom is an eternal struggle. Mom is the moon that holds us conscionable, holds

Our fantasies, in flower, late spring, zero fall, lack of transition is what she mourned most, because she loved the bloom, lived for the pretty. Once I copied a photograph. I wanted to enliven her youth, 16 year old self, the one next to a black cat with white stomach, her own skin see through blue, lunar eclipsing a familiar meow.