My mother might as well be Demeter:

green thumbs, garden blooming 

lavender and mint

all Canadian-winter round.

 

She gives me dirt,

Miracle-Gro, rules

and still I can only preserve

those things that are made for drought

like I am death after her life

not Persephone,

but Hades himself.

 

My grandfather grows bonsais

lovingly trimmed and cared for.

He gave me a miniature pomegranate

for my sixteenth birthday;

it died 

before I could ever

transgress and eat it.

 

Some days it feels like I am buried

too deep under rocks to sprout myself,

let alone coax anything else

into life

 

like I can only be the afterlife,

hands too weak to keep out winter,

let alone dig in the frozen ground,

like I am too hungry 

to possibly wait for fruit to grow.