by Lisa Shapiro Flynn

Awake at 3 AM, I want
to plunge my fists into something, but don’t
know how to bake the bread
that others bake. The lilac light is hanging

as the droplet-shaped bud clusters
in my small yard, the plant I didn’t know
was there until my daughter
pointed out a bee-strafed bush. This spring is

lush, the hemlock and holly bursting. Even
the giant fir that shadows my child’s room
seems to be thriving, its trunk wrapped
in finger-thick vines and climbed with ivy.

I know the tree is dying/needs killing, for mercy
or to save my home, but I don’t know how
to take it down. Instead, I keep my daughter
in my bed, twined in my arms every night,

my eyes open and dry as I listen for impact,
the explosion of wood and glass.

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Lisa Schapiro Flynn has poems in or forthcoming from Birdcoat Quarterly, The Tishman Review, Radar Poetry, Bluestem, The Crab Creek Review, Pretty Owl Poetry, and others. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry, and she received Honorable Mention for the 2018 Crab Creek Review Poetry Prize judged by Maggie Smith. Lisa has an MFA in poetry from Emerson College and has studied at Bread Loaf, VQR, Eckerd College, and others.