generational

My grandmother never cut flowers with scissors, raised her nonexistent eyebrows plucked beyond all veins of recognition, blinked one eye fishlike & said a knife was all she needed. She’d come inside with sticky hands, green juice like blood, double-take, monster in the basement, peonies pale pink & festering with ants. The knife gleaming like dragonfly wings like all the jeweled eyes of birds. Somewhere someone you know is dying. Never cut flowers with scissors, let them fall at the blade like my great-grandpa’s leg in the war. Spring is always coming.

My grandfather’s blood ran with sugar, too much then too little beep beep beep beep, woke me up forever until I grew up & stopped wearing dresses. Ask him if he’s ever eaten upstairs, sandwich on rye or slice of lukewarm tiramisu from the bakery on the corner, go on ask him & I’ll bet you twenty years of someone’s life he’ll say no. Twenty years he spent like pennies pinched tight between his knucklebones, peeling the skin off the apples off the pears off the sunrises & the pale flesh between your throat & the ground. Never cut flowers with scissors. In another country people die. Spring will never arrive.