The Question of My Mother

The question of my mother is on the table. The dark box of her mind is also there, the garden of everywhere we used to walk together. Among the things the body doesn't know, it is the dark box I return to most: fallopian city engrained in memory, ghost-orchid egg in the arboretum, hinged lid forever bending back and forth — open to me, then closed like the petals of the paperwhite narcissus. What would it take to make a city in me? Dark arterial streets, neglected ovary hard as an acorn hidden in its dark box on the table: Mother, I am out of my mind, spilling everywhere.