Day Zero

In every morning-after apology,

my mother carries the old garden inside.

Clipping the rose hips from their shriveled

stems, she will re-root

them in the earth’s guts

not unlike the changing of diapers.

As if we are young

again, we hope for rebirth;

buds swelling

opening like an embrace.

I’ll rake her in;

her skin untouched and raw,

the early

dust scattering like night beetles,

everything breaking

with light.

In these moments, she’ll trace circles

on my palms

as though she is untangling

the thicket of roses;

dethorning the cuticles

on my fingernails.

She’ll tell me there is nothing

beautiful about addiction.

And I know,

I know. In the hunger

of her grief, her body is nothing

but knuckles

and bones in my side.

We fear only cycles.

The flimsy

whistle in I'm Sorry;

her tongue breaking the center

of the vowels.

The kitchen walls we’ll cover

again in white.

In the starting over,

The sunlight buckles through the shutters

Of this old stucco and plaster.

My mother always exhales in two billows,

The second heavier than the first.

Anastasia is a high school junior at the Westminster Schools in in Atlanta, Georgia. She is the head editor of her school’s literary magazine, Evolutions, and her work has been commended by Scholastic Art and Writing Awards as well as featured by the Hunger Magazine.