content warning for miscarriage/child death

Daylily

warm nights I dream you back to me
out of your father’s sleeping body
you would be twenty this year daughter

once I sat in a room filled with women
the air smelled of dog fur and rain
we imagined you a face but not a name

every year it’s the same routine
I sift fresh soil for you, dig you up
and bury you, call you seed, bulb, tuber,

animal, mineral, flower, anything but daughter
the world grows hotter—April feels like August
it’s my birthday month—yours too, born

and dead the same day like the dates
on the smallest stones in the pioneer graveyard
where I stand in the sloppy rain

a stamp from Spain shows Madonna and child
affixed above the word frágil
when the sun goes down I have nothing of you

not even your ashes daughter
and though your glimmer dims each year
spring will not stop coming

and I cannot stop planting
daylily, spiderwort, morning glory
flowers that bloom for only one day

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