Me, my mother, and her mother too

              chewing cherries

to the core. Cheek muscles splaying summer

        flesh from bone and tongue.

Used to say if I swallowed the knuckleseed whole

                a tree would grow

inside me. Threading branches in maternal bellies

        tugging long after leaving home.

********************

A father’s hands clamped round whiskey and wrist.

                  Breasts aching six months

in the postpartum ward. Whispers of a mother’s affair.

        Wonderings of raising a daughter differently.

********************

I knocked against those wooded pits

              as a tadpole twisting through centers.

Found my way between lilypad memories

        flooding wishbone hips.

********************

Woke in the night to the phone call—

my Grandmother’s heart burst

like a berry between teeth.

We all doubled over with deep cramping

as roots released their braids.

Or was it a blooming?

The way flowers uncrumple

their fists.