If She Could Speak
For Father’s day, I give him
a planchette and a message
from the little girl he killed years ago.
When I died, she says, I didn’t.
You smothered me on my bedroom floor,
and as I dissolved, I watched.
Watched as my mother gashed the bedsheet,
practicing on her wrists.
You took some tulips from the garden,
I saw you both stitch them over the wound.
Then you took my body,
shoveled me into the compost
to be eaten away into mulch.
I didn’t disappear the way you wanted me to.
When I became earth,
my fingers dug into the dirt,
became roots. I grew
out instead of up,
snaked my way under the crawlspace
into the house,
curled myself around your bedposts.
You said I’d never speak again.
My mouth blossoms.
For Father’s day, I give him
a planchette and a message
from the little girl he killed years ago.
When I died, she says, I didn’t.
You smothered me on my bedroom floor,
and as I dissolved, I watched.
Watched as my mother gashed the bedsheet,
practicing on her wrists.
You took some tulips from the garden,
I saw you both stitch them over the wound.
Then you took my body,
shoveled me into the compost
to be eaten away into mulch.
I didn’t disappear the way you wanted me to.
When I became earth,
my fingers dug into the dirt,
became roots. I grew
out instead of up,
snaked my way under the crawlspace
into the house,
curled myself around your bedposts.
You said I’d never speak again.
My mouth blossoms.
Auden Eagerton is a non-binary poet located in Kennesaw, Georgia. They received a Bachelor of Arts in English at Kennesaw State University, and will pursue their MFA in Creative Writing at Georgia College and State University beginning in August 2020. Their work has been featured in Exhume Literary Journal, Cathexis Northwest Press, LandLocked Magazine, Across the Margin, DASH Literary Journal, The Bookends Review, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Digging Through the Fat/Digging Press, Feral: A Journal of Art and Poetry, and is upcoming in peculiar, The Meadow, Kudzu, and Swimming with Elephants Press.