Lilacs and Feathers
I dreamt your mother died
in a room in your house that looked
like your room, but couldn’t be: this room
faced the back of the house, the creek,
the bridge, and sunshine poured
through billowed curtains.
Your room was always dark.
I dreamt she died
in a bed who’s head
was just below the window
that looked like your window,
the window that we climbed through
to the porch roof. We’d smoke cigarettes and talk,
star-gaze, dream
try to lean out, grab the branches
of the tree in your front yard,
see if we could climb down, sneak away.
We never could.
We never did.
I dreamt we stood gathered all around her,
your sisters, you and I.
Then we heard noises past the bedroom door,
so I walked out to the hallway where
your brother,
handcuffed,
trudged up the stairs.
He stopped, looked up,
and his eyes crawled over me hungry.
I backed away. He followed.
When I came back,
you handed me the heavy scissors
and pointed to a lilac tree
somehow now within the room,
dirt still clinging to its roots and covered with blossoms,
purple and white.
“Will you cut us each a sprig?” you asked,
and I tried
but with each clip the flowers trembled, fell
and disappeared. They would not stay
and your mother’s breathing bubbled
and roughened
and then
you and your sisters grew wings.
You climbed out the window
that looked like your window
the sun streamed through the curtains
you did not need to climb a tree, you just
unfurled your wings
your sudden wings
and flew
and your brother, in irons, could not grow his.
He howled and shook
screamed his impotence
and the breath
in your mother’s body rose
and fell
rose and fell
and stopped.
I looked down
my hands were full of twigs
my hands were full of twigs
and feathers
my hands were feathers
the window was open
Jennifer Maloney writes and lives in Rochester, NY. She is the current president of Just Poets, Inc., a literary organization based in that city. Find her work in Aaduna.org, The Pangolin Review, Memoryhouse Magazine, the forthcoming edition of the UK-based blog, Celebrating Change (expected to be available online July 12, 2019), and in several anthologies, most notably in Volume 7 of ImageOutWrite, work from the LGBTQ+ community and allies. Jennifer is the founder and curator of Just Poets Presents! a reading series dedicated to listening to the voices of under-heard and marginalized poets, to breaking regional boundaries to bring these poets to the Rochester stage, and perhaps most importantly, to paying them! Jennifer is happiest when writing and when building community with other artists.