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This writing was accepted for publication in the 84 page perfect-bound issue of cc&d (v224) (the September 2011 Issue, You can also order this 5.5" x 8.5" issue as an ISSN# paperback book:						This is also in this 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback “Autumn Again” Order this 6" x 9" ISBN# book:

Order this writing in the book Fragments (a cc&d collection book)		get the 322 page September-December 2011 cc&d magazine issue collection 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback book:

Second Bloom

Stephanie Kaylor

My mother
sits in the floral print chair,
tattered and stained, and says
“I am oppressed.”

Her eyes
gaze at nothing I can see
as she reaches behind the thick
glass lenses to wipe away tears.

She never learned
how to drive, trapped by the emptiness
of her eyes, but she would take my hand

and walk through
the streets of modernity, every
footstep an anachronism, until

we would arrive
at the labyrinth of a park, and
I always swung the highest when

she stood behind
and gave me a push, intoxicated
as if she felt the air herself.

Now she sits
alone at night, feeling empty with
no child to melt into her arms

and I wonder
if my body giving fruit to these
memories is but a part of my role

as her daughter
pushing her past out of my womb
and freeing her from the fear that

her life
has become barren, each of the eggs
she once laid hidden in a nest

she cannot quite see,
but in the rose garden I would breathe
in the collective perfume while

she told me
of their different names and breeds,
of how if you look closely at the bees

you can tell
which types won’t sting apart
from those that live to make us honey.

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