to mama

butchered pumpkin seeds
and rosebud-coated tongues,
you plant apologies and nothing
else on my doorstep. 

it is summer
and meaning has escaped me:
those fickle clouds and their shapeless ideologies,
their abstract tendrils envelope me in hues of blue.
they upended grandmother’s cherry tree in
summer, right after the sun lost itself in navy
shades, before the moon careened
into that starless pit. 

in the summer
i explode into reds and oranges
to match the rosebuds that graced our kitchen counter—
i’ve always wondered if those cherries (bittersweet, tiny ecstasies)
tasted like the ones mother would pluck in 

her yellow field 

her own personal heaven.