Summer nights, my mother brought us carrots, peeled
in the great dark of the kitchen.
Hot and hungry, Dahlia and I
would sit on the stucco stairs
of the apartment that looked like a motel,
toes entwined, waiting for her.
Then she would come, holding
the carrots in her fingers, and gently,
because we knew how to hurt her, we would ask,
can we have a house, can we ever have
a garden? I wanted
butterflies to land on my fingers and Dahlia
to touch their pulsing wings,
brittle leaves to break against my palms, to
smooth the coarse remains down her cheeks.
There was a dirt I had never known.
She squeezed the carrots, and we could see
how chapped and tender
her fingers were, as if she'd spent days
digging in the earth.
Then quickly, because she knew
how hungry we were, she slid the carrots
between her fingers, and as they slipped
coolly into our mouths, we could love her.
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