So what my parents grew insignificantly apart,
their lives branching: mother in another state
tending to my grandfather and his undue garden;
father learning realty as the housing bubble popped,
Baltimore to St. Mary’s county keeping him
on the road and always, always missing.
So what, my mother’s voice stretches through
the coiled phone line, asking only why
she doesn’t prune the bougainvillea back
and why the overgrowth rambled so long
in the first place, its thorny stalks obscured
beneath ornamental clusters, papery bracts
extending, taking her hand, puncturing…
She’s stuck on why, some thorn of reason
even leather gloves leave her vulnerable
and throbbing, when there’s another call
on the line, my father’s number, reaching out
of another excused absence, so I ask her to hold on,
torn, because there’s something wildly beautiful
about barbs and petals, corollas of imperfection
growing continually out of another’s design,
the cell walls’ needs climbing a fence painted gray,
the entanglement losing us all deep within.
~ Radford Skudrna
Radford Skudrna is an MFA Candidate at the University of Maryland, College Park. He majored in both Creative Writing and Anthropology/Sociology at Roger Williams University, where he served as Managing Editor of roger, an art & literary magazine. His recent work has appeared in the Barely South Review and Bayou Magazine. He currently works at the National Foreign Language Center.
Artwork:Â She lived as roses live, by Maria Khan (charcoal on canvas)
