By Lauren Elaine Jeter

Everything was red once—

your bra propped behind the backseat, liquor

mixed into wine, poppies breathing out from the graves

that you’ve laid with your past, killing your demons

for your darling (and the pool of you that they pulled

him from one evening in May). New mother,

I was there, saw your skin unstitched, umbilical cord knitting

you to your son as they unraveled him from your body.

New mother, I’ll paint a picture of crape myrtle petals

raining around you. This is not to say all is clear air

and sunshine—I know that you are both stamen and pistil:

tired mother, tired father. But you are standing nectar-rich

and sure. New mother takes me to the lake in summer

the day before I marry. (Ophelia, last time you gathered a bouquet,

I feared your fate in water, but we are the third generation

to stand in this place and raise our arms

toward the water and the world—my grandfather brought

his children here.) New mother, we are knit into the strata

of this town. New mother, we are soulknit, tethered

to the strata of each other; I’ll swallow this Texas dirt with you

in a strange covenant if that’s what you need, best friend fearing

my move across the country (we get matching tattoos instead).

Best friend, there is nothing to fear now—your son is budding,

and you are every garden full, every butterfly flitting in. (Gardens

are more ancient than marriage or man.) You’ve already taught me

what it means to stay. I am every moth at your door.

Lauren Elaine Jeter has a BFA in Creative Writing from Stephen F. Austin State University. Her poems have appeared in Rust + Moth, San Pedro River Review, Crab Creek Review, the museum of americana, and elsewhere. She lives in the coastlands of North Carolina with her husband and chocolate lab.