Cat Bones in the Flower Beds

It started with handfuls of rain

and breast in October. It started in a doorway,

someone was 17, but most of us

weren’t born yet.

It made our mothers buy hair dye

and finger soft fruit at the market.

It made our fathers

our fathers.

Isn’t it something,

that here we are now

rubbing on each other’s

bellies and bottoms

slipping on and off

silk robes

of mother, lover, and father.

We fill each other’s mouths

with the pulse and promise

of art, music, and living the way

we always thought that we should.

What I’m saying is,

it all makes sense to me.

* text first published in Getting There, 2008

*Photograph found and coveted. My birth mother Regina, and father Kevin. Circa 1975, California.