My mom makes a croak
like a big bullfrog in a bog.
My dad, like a cat about to vomit.
I make a sound like an arrow-shot doe
collapsing, as the brown
and once-living leaves
embrace her in their scent.
This is not the part of life
where the dandelions first pop into color,
but when they whiten; wind wafts them away.
This is the part where petals curl under.
Now is when slivers of ice hide in the gale.
I am the wind now, palm-slapping the house
when a single knock did not suffice.
The house is surrounding
by bog and bullfrog and fog
like gauze draping shrubbery
that cats slip through silently.
My ex-husband said as he was driving a bus
he saw a young woman crawl
onto a bridge’s rails and jump in front of an SUV.
This is one way of getting to the house.
When the palm-slapping didn’t work,
I ran around the house and screamed.
No god let me in, nor his butler.
God’s butler does not like early arrivals.
My ex-husband said the sound was indescribable,
the sound of the girl entering that house.
Mary Ann Honaker is the author of Becoming Persephone (Third Lung Press, 2019), and Whichever Way the Moon (Main Street Rag, 2023). Her poems have appeared in Bear Review, JMWW, Juked, Little Patuxent Review, Rattle.com, Solstice, Sweet Tree Review, and elsewhere. She currently lives in MacArthur, West Virginia.
