The yellow-green soft spot on a fingerling potato peel
twiddled away by my cousin, steadfastly
preparing party pea-salad for the day his parents will wed.

Finally, my mother muttered. Their invitation, our refrigerator door,
reminders to my father: “Check the Oven,” “Put Hand to Stovetop,”
and “Where are the Dogs?”

Post-it notes, fliers for PTA events no one will attend, pictures
of my siblings & me, stringy-haired babies bathing in bubbles. Behind
it all, his credit card frozen in Coca-Cola by my mother & me, young.

Young me laughed at despair:
the “Why? Why?” when my father saw that big,
carbonated block of icy cola.

At the wedding party, hosted in my aunt and uncle’s overgrown back garden,
my mother is alone, wearing her best crow feathers in the form of a black gown.
I spot her under the gaudy decor of leaves strung together by their parched veins.

The bride exhausts us. My aunt in a thrifted vintage gown
tied at the middle, strings of crème-colored pearls, the scent of roast pig &
salt ruminating in air, underscoring spores spreading sweet to our lungs.

I imagine after the bells chime when the party is over, we might go home
together—to that shut door—come face-to-beak with the crow whose feathers
drape us in pieties for my father. I imagine parting my lips to new words:

Our garden is still a garden. Ours meant to hum a low tune.
Mama would say: let us bow down in prayer this one time.
This one time only.

[Editor’s Note: Publication of this poem was made possible by a gift from Katherine Prevost during our annual Kickstarter.]