you stand in the middle of the kitchen
because your mother said it was easier,
said it was lighter without the weight of
a braid thick as the bread your
grandma used to knead back and forth
on her wooden table. your grandpa
made that table when your mother
still ran around in long
hair tangled with weeds she still
believed were flowers. there
were five chairs then, she tells you they
were crooked.
misshapen like the scar on your arm
from falling off the willow the
seventh summer you lived. the branches
pulled the sky to the earth,
dirt cracked your wrist, but
you were lucky. you were lucky,
your daddy said
to only have the breath stolen from
your lungs for a moment. that
moment of grasping for
air never left you, still, and
you
stand in the middle of the kitchen
crying as, in one snip, the past your
waist strands of your hair swish.
near your bare feet and she's wrong
it's not
lighter.
you finger the sudden cut and peek
in the chipped mirror, you look older.
and now
it's too late to pretend you won't
ever grow up, too
late to still call dandelions
flowers.
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