The silence in our mother’s home
Is what she scolded us, always, for breaking,
And which we broke anyway.
It is thick and heavy and dark, like the air that is Florida
Right before a thunderstorm,
When we ran home in the downpour
And arrived, inevitably, soaked to the skin.
My brother thrums guitar strings,
Rusting in the humid air.
They leave red stains on his fingertips,
But he plays as though the warped notes
Were whispered to him by Orpheus.
I shattered a ceramic vase when I was nine
And tried to glue back it together, to
the way it was when my mother carried it
Across an ocean, wrapped lovingly in a purple tapestry.
The vase fell apart again, of course.
She was furious at me, our mother, and
Cried when she thought I could not see.
Eurydice never did leave the underworld.
My brother’s knuckles are tight on the steering wheel,
Traces of rust are stuck in both our nails.
In the rearview mirror, fireflies swallow a home.
To love is to not look back.
The purple tapestry hangs in my apartment now.
I carried it across seven states with me,
Wrapped in a plastic bag in the backseat of my car.
My mother never used it but kept it folded
In a drawer, neat, for me to use one day,
And every time I look at it
I hear the shattering of a ceramic vase.
