all the women joked that when grandfather died, he left one bankrupt plant,
two sole-less shoes, and three sterile wives. punchline: no money but opium plants
wet white with semen—sons. i’ve heard it before: how history repeats, planting
lies through sons in smoking porcelain vases. how often, white powder can supplant
a man. it’s because i caught the sun out plumping magnolias to milky white
while mother fainted, her mouth oozing saliva, screaming, my plants
when she lost the house after the divorce. above, the sun riding high, puffing out white
clouds. that night, i bound mother’s rotting lotus feet and found seeds under toenails, dying plants
under her soles. i couldn’t save him, she whispered, palms filled with chrysanthemum-white
seeds, and i knew it wasn’t about her garden. soon it was morning with its dead plants,
the sun baring its bloated belly, here, still, in California—land of golden poppies—wild plants
that i could not escape. i, replanted father, opium pipe in babbling lips.
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