Freesia
by Ellen Kombiyil
I was born on a sideways
twilight w/ cars passing
the interstate the nurse
telling mama don’t breathe
like that honey you’ll wear
yourself out but mama
spilled salt crossed her
legs when I crowned the blue
of laid down carpet blooming
freesia her packed suitcase
beneath a window
the apology
pinned to my chest
she tried to be forgiven
by baking pound cake
heavy & rich cast
in a sugar-
speckled block cut
into thick slabs
insects butting against
glass—it was lilacs
not freesia spilling
from windows—how could I
forget mama
I slid from you wings
closed an almost
glittering bird
twilight w/ cars passing
the interstate the nurse
telling mama don’t breathe
like that honey you’ll wear
yourself out but mama
spilled salt crossed her
legs when I crowned the blue
of laid down carpet blooming
freesia her packed suitcase
beneath a window
the apology
pinned to my chest
she tried to be forgiven
by baking pound cake
heavy & rich cast
in a sugar-
speckled block cut
into thick slabs
insects butting against
glass—it was lilacs
not freesia spilling
from windows—how could I
forget mama
I slid from you wings
closed an almost
glittering bird
Ellen Kombiyil is the author of Histories of the Future Perfect (2015) and the micro chapbook Avalanche Tunnel (2016). She is a co-Founder of The (Great) Indian Poetry Collective, a mentorship-model press publishing emerging poets from India and the diaspora, and teaches creative writing at Hunter College. Recent work has appeared in diode, Pleiades, and Plume.