I'm undone

they declare—
Regency heroines in climactic throes,
Victorian fainters, Romantic lovers—
in command of an iamb 
even as they succumb to forces 
greater than will alone. I’m undone, 
we each announced this year 
and last year and especially the year
that rent childhood’s seams for us.
You know the one. That did it.

Mine rises like a peony above a long fence—
heavy, layered with petals like organdy over satin over
petticoats and hosiery, enshrouding what’s underneath—
the done of undone
pulsing within memory,
breathing quietly, sipping from a narrow straw. 
My peony survives because tiny ants
tend to her day and night like footmen
in foretelling livery. 

Every spring, I bring my peony inside
and hold her head underwater
to drown the ants. Ritual 
becomes her.

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L.J. Sysko is the author of Battledore (Finishing Line Press). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Best New Poets, Radar, Rattle, Painted Bride Quarterly, Moist, and Stirring, among others. A Virginia Center for Creative Arts Fellow and a 2022 Palm Beach Poetry Festival Thomas Lux Scholar, Sysko holds an MFA in poetry from New England College and has twice been awarded fellowships by Delaware's Division of the Arts; other honors include several Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg awards, an Academy of American Poets prize, and finalist recognition from Marsh Hawk Press, The Fourth River, The Pinch, and Soundings East. Her poetry has twice been shortlisted for the Fish Publishing Prize, judged by Billy Collins. She is a reader for The Common, lives in Wilmington, Delaware, and can be found online at ljsysko.com.