daisy broth

short fiction

Walking tarantulas of cast grain peacock betwixt the daisies I once mistook as weeds. I carry your too-new self around the yard, shielding you from the fading delft blue. The new puppy scent on your breath tickles my lips.

You don't know what I mean, but I tell you anyway.

This is where I buried your brother—right there, by the daisies. 

I point for you.

Right there, where the soil is the color of tree bark.

You play with my thumb as I tell you everything. How I sing in the garden every morning, why I cry when the geese migrate, how a great sinkhole blooms out from his bones when we're not looking.

It's true.

I've seen it in my dreams—a bottomless black maw spiraling out from the daisies, wresting the carpet from under the world's feet—soil, cars, trees, neighbors, will, time—it all falls into the abyss.

Your grip tightens on my thumb, and I bounce you up and down.

If you intend to grow in this home, your mantra is: smile.

When you scrape your little knees—smile.

When I pancake the cat with the car—smile.

When the January moths masticate your face—smile.

We'll play in the yard and watch movies, the three of us buttertongued and Howdy Doody!—smiling as the sulfurous plume wafting in from the sinkhole stunts our love yous into slag psalms.

Smile, smile, smile…

On the day I lose it completely, you'll be at school, your father at work, and I'll be digging up his bones in the daisies.

You'll croon, doe-eyed, about Ms. Vogel's science experiment. She sprinkled black pepper in water and squeezed a dollop of dish soap smack dab in the center; when the opaline goo hit the surface, all the flakes scurried away. You'll sniff the roiling broth and tell me how the little pepper roaches screamed like Pompeians.

We'll gather 'round the kitchen table, watching the odd spring snow subsume the lawn, smile-slurping our daisy bone soup.

We'll be honest about everything: the daisies, the sinkhole, the slag psalms, the moths...

When I tell you he's in our soup, the sinkhole will open us up. 

It will start in our tummies, our belly buttons becoming donut hole nothings. The dark will push us out, pepper and soap; our fibers chased tight against trembling outlines.

It won't hurt, I promise.

We'll throb with sated smiles, the pressure building and building like a Great Auntie hug until poof!—we're moist little flakes raining upon the tile, freed from the fowled nest.

We'll become daisies, growing through the tile where our smudges lay—growing taller than redwoods, pushing up up up through the roof so we can sniff the sky.

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