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Paper Flowers

Jamie Grischkan

She taught me

what her grandmother once taught her,

in borrowed moments scented

with aged perfume that hung like

dried leaves in pockets of sagging skin,

how to bend, fold, and tear

the edges of a paper square

into a four-petaled flower.

When my father had left for the day,

in the sticky sweet months of

an Indian summer,

my mother showed me the way,

guiding my hands through

slow, uncertain movements

until I found my pace

in the rhythm of her smile,

until a paper garden filled

our kitchen and our hearts

with easy joy.

Draped in the warm haze

of lazy afternoons

she taught me,

in the shade of our

permanent flowers,

the simpler things,

how to love and be loved,

how to sing laughter

like a favorite melody,

how to trust in the

moments between the folds,

infused with an ordinary kind of magic

that was enough, then,

to remind her of the secret places

even the deepest hurts cannot touch.

In the crush and sigh of paper edges

I heard the lonely song

of my mother’s heartbeat

and matched my breath to hers,

unspoken words spelled out in the

crinkled cry of careful tears,

two pieces ripped from a whole.