It was enough, the wild asparagus growing outside the fence,
\nunconditionally for the entire family, but only
\nmy parents would eat it. I would pretend to wield dry tiger lily
\nstalks as rapiers, pretend that our property extended
\nbeyond the painted stakes.
\nWhen everything was growing, I would feel claustrophobic
\nnever venturing out of the backyard, smaller than the leaves
\nthat walked with me in their own winds.
\nThe forsythia behind the travel trailer, still and warm,
\nlike a sulfur bush fondling its half-life, soon
\nas summer ceases.
\nTwo gardens that my mother never found satisfaction,
\nuncovering wild myrtle from the woods between our house
\nand the neighbor’s, tangled in leaves from last year
\nand leaves from years before my birth.
\nThe world within our meager acres enough to
\nfrighten our mother to bits if she couldn’t see us.
\nAs a child I never knew whether to stop my dog from tearing
\nup my mother’s flower garden, or laugh from a hidden distance,
\nand wait for the screen door to slam,
\nscrambling through the garage and into the front yard,
\neavesdropping my dog getting “a talking to.”
\nI couldn’t keep the gaze of a flower,
\nnot even the tallest tiger lilies, still higher
\nthan the tape measure my dad would seasonally determine my growth by,
\nnot the tiger lilies, like children’s finger paint, the
\ninfant hands reaching towards curiosity and its excavation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It was enough, the wild asparagus growing outside the fence, unconditionally for the entire family, but only my parents would eat it. I would pretend to wield dry tiger lily stalks as rapiers, pretend that our property extended beyond the painted stakes. When everything was…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/281"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11826"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15496,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11826\/revisions\/15496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}