Garden

The petals are tired
from this business of opening.

When I was young,
you dressed me in floral and frill,

white socks trimmed with lace.
The apple of your eye,

the cherry on top. Buttercup
you called me. The girl

picking honeysuckle from the fence
while her brothers built forts

in the woods. I once followed them
but got lost.

We cannot prepare for these things.
We will not know how it unfolds.

The yard is in full bloom,
and we are taking a photo

in our Easter clothes before church—
the sun squinting our young eyes,

you are smiling behind the camera.
A perfect picture of your three.

It is exhausting to think of words for this.

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Holly Mason received her MFA in Poetry from GMU. Her poetry, interviews, and reviews have been published in The Adroit Journal, Rabbit Catastrophe Review, The Northern Virginia Review, Foothill Poetry Journal, University of Arizona Poetry Center Blog, Entropy, CALYX, and elsewhere. She has been a reader and panelist for OutWrite in DC (a Celebration of Queer Literature) and participated in DC's Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here events as a Kurdish-American poet.