Mother

Spring dissolves into summer
and June carries its wet
in its teeth,
waters the earth green

and glittering with apple blossoms.
Everywhere, the smell of heat
and imminent fruit.
It is not enough

to float my own hand
to my belly and find nothing there
but flesh, at least
that is the trick my blood plays—grief

at an absence
that was always an absence.
What do you call an emptiness
that seeks to fill itself? The opposite of a ghost

is a promise.
I carve a ripe strawberry
from my breast, red
as anything. Sometimes

there are no words
for that which is borne
of the body
but

we try again
anyway.
Love too
is like this.