Floral Remedies
Seeking calm, my young mother used
to plant daisies on her nightstand.
Amazing strength those flowers had
to erase traces of abuse,
to weed the hurt away. She loved
each petal, even the death-kissed
ones. Now the flushed coreopsis
of Prozac unfolds in her blood
and sobers her. She is losing
depression’s hard tongues: the very
voice that would howl, or sing, to me
is shrouded in
the bouquet of psychiatry.
My mother has lost it. She
is less herself, less ferocious.
Still and beautiful, the goldfish
between her daisies breathes subtly.