“You’d be a sunflower,” he said.
“A red one.”
A rust-flake blossom.
First, townspeople
will use your father’s shovel to scoop sidewalks
and plant you between water
pipes and gas lines—a seed
sunk into a bedeviled skein.
They’ll watch you
through your mother’s ring as fingers and toes
vanish into red clay and suck
every sip
of snow from soil,
finding final dregs
under schoolyards and blue parks.
Soon, you will rush through
the city’s bones, twisting
towards the creek—cracking
through pavement
to feed on sulfur-soaked skies.
When you begin to sprout your crimson blooms,
a lover will rain down on you,
a febrile storm,
giving all you can drink.
He’ll pluck the weeds that scratch your throat and
you’ll grow,
timber telephone poles,
spread in tarnished green with
your armies of aphids—corkscrewing the courthouse,
the temple, the tower.
At last, you’ll unfurl
in the Youngstown-yellow skies,
swirling like a great wine, watching the city
as a goddess
behind red stained-glass.
