Kara Lewis
GARDEN ABECEDARIAN
Alice was the first name I gave to what would invade, what I believed would
bud inside me. I pronounced it in French, watering a hint that in this
country where cribs glint like trellises and rabbits bite anything ripe, I could never have a
daughter. In the parking lot where asphalt birthed black cohosh, a man pointed to his
eight year old, asked, So, would you shoot her? The fetus in his picture unfurled like the reddest
flower. In the center, something female swelling, called a pistil. I have uncocked an engorged
gynoecium at the gynecologist, ovaries overgrown and cysts blossoming like bullets.
How will we get to the root of this? Asked the doctors, my gown slicked with blood or mud,
I stopped telling the difference. I said, In ancient Greek, gyn means wife.
Just like paperwork asks a husband’s opinion, I never found a plant beautiful until reproduction.
Killer. Monster. Black thumb. When I lifted the wilting laceleaf toward my lover, I wanted him to
laugh at what I killed. Like the game night where the card that said Shouldn’t have kids landed in
my pile. The room as cold as ultrasound goo that once covered my stomach, my friend said,
No offense. I mean, look at your succulent. What I kill makes me quirky, crowns me not like
other girls. At the farmer’s market, I caught my lover gazing at a seedling, a perennial
premonition of how he will leave me. I tell him about Alices and other things long extinct,
quiet bedtime stories about how when we draw hearts, we’re actually drawing silphium seeds.
Really, what’s inside us is too ugly to be any kind of aphrodisiac,
so we reach for what’s ancient. I wanted him to bring me wildflowers in a vase, to say, I will
tear up the earth for you. I will pluck what you love from its mother and deliver it
uprooted. Every time I feel rootless, unblooming, I Google search
variegation, how disease unfurls in coveted flecks of yellow and
white. At Lowe’s, I asked, What if I forget to water? My
xerarch daughter, I’d find you in the desert, next to a crashed plane and a lonely prince. I’d find
you on another planet. Teach me how to be that tall, that hardy, your
zealousness reaching toward a sunset that only we can see.