Sow Lace

They claimed the magnolias tarried
this season.
Sweetly rotten,
too vivid
to forget their spring.
But I suspect
they were biding time,
waiting for someone like me to leave.

Lace curled into tendrils,
a sickly-sweet,
invasive thread,
binding the bright
and the blighted
into my palms,
gloved in whispers,
satin-soft—
the things that spit in your stead.

In the cobblestone clatter
of Mary Janes,
in my quiet decay,
the girl in cotillion white.
Mother warned me:
my blood runs too slow
for that brisk dance,
the loops and knots
beneath fertile skin.

The debutantes,
trimmed, trained,
raised to bloom on cue,
no crimson thread for me
as I lingered aside.

Forgive me,
bosom-bound daughters
of this haunted, humid Americana.
Forgive me, dears,
for stirring your assembly halls.

​

My blood,
a drought
in this lush congregation.

This year,
the magnolias burst forth,
confessions laid bare.
There are new fields to cultivate.
And I,
I will sow lace.