Hand-Me-Downs
Sarah Dravec

I could never be angry with the daisy
growing unseasonably in my front yard.

My mother loved daisies, and my mother is dead.
I do not plan to put on these pajamas. I plan to stay

naked. I am my mother when I am perusing
the grocery store floral department. The cashier

can think what she wants. Wearing her old clothes
gives me panic attacks. I get my mother's panic attacks.

I do not need these roses. I thought to plant them, grid-like,
along an interstate, but I need this soil to cover myself.

I am very angry. My mother was never angry.
Today was the wrong day to wake up in the grass.

Sarah Dravec is a graduate student in the NEOMFA in Akron, Ohio, where she studies poetry. She is a poetry editor for Barn Owl Review. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in And/Or, The Bakery, Dressing Room Poetry Journal, and Josephine Quarterly.

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