by Jennifer Garfield

Confession: I forget to smell the flowers.
There they are, white and soft, nestled

in that green I can’t identify. Language
returns from 10th grade Biology—stamen,

ovule, filament. The words feel good. Always
better than the real thing, a weight in my brain,

like I might hold them, a memory bouquet.
There was the formaldehyde on frog day,

and my lab partner’s wintergreen gum,
his adam’s apple bobbing beneath

a hemp choker. It was a confusing time.
What should one want—to tear into

the frog’s embryonic skin, flacid and gray
when I poked with a knife? Or should I

recoil, let the lab partner do this manly
work? I was learning how to be female,

to dissect each moment for clues. Directions:
To dissect is not to ‘cut up,’ but to ‘expose

to view.’ I was learning to reveal myself in parts—
dorsal, ventral, lateral—a lifetime collection

of rules. If you have a female frog,
remove and place the ovaries in the tray.

I was learning to conceal. We worked
together, the lab partner and I,

and made it to the triangle-shaped
heart before he ran to the bathroom

and threw up. I pressed on, forceps
and probe. Our ovaries were filled

with eggs. Reflect: Notice the heart
has 3 chambers. How many chambers

does your heart have?” I answered
everything that was asked of me,

and double-checked my work.
What should one want

to be obedient, or to be free?
But that was many years ago,

and I am writing about beauty today,
not dead frogs, not the way a heart

builds walls. I bend to smell my flowers,
and can already see they are past

their prime. The milky flesh turning
to yellow-brown, the faint scent

I hope to redeem me thick with rot.
I tug a petal but the stem protests,

and my palm unfurls like a hug opened.
What am I trying to save? Not the girl

told to observe the relationship between
organ and function. Not the girl who didn’t

say no. Conclude: What insight do you have
into the relationship between life and death?

I leave the last question blank.

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Jennifer Garfield's work has been published or is forthcoming in journals including Salamander, Threepenny Review, and Sugar House Review. She was a finalist for the Frontier Poetry 2019 Open, and has received an Illinois Arts Council Literary Grant and Martha’s Vineyard Institute for Creative Writing Parent-Writer Fellowship. She is a high school English teacher near Boston.