What Flora remembered was
me lying with my legs
pressed up against the wall
and the cool wood floor
beneath my back
and the heavy book
I held inches from my face
she even remembered
an earlier time
when I bright-eyed
floated warm soapy water
tiny bubbles popping
wondering how to make
mother love me
or standing in the sun porch
flooded August light
mother lying broken body
down on old eiderdown
I sat my little body down
beside mother stared
at the cream ceiling
the whirs of my own breath
drowning out labored breathing
Flora too was there
and how strange
for her to not have told me
had I known I might have
said join me
The Procession
Flora Field is an MFA candidate in poetry at Columbia University, where she is the recipient of a Chair’s Fellowship. She received a Ruth George Poetry Prize and a Crombie Allen Award, and she is an Ament Scholar