Your Mother's Daisies

by Jesselyn Collins

In the center of our house, illuminated by a single light bulb, there is a pot of flowers that your mother sent last spring. She is a good German housewife, and wants me to be your good German housewife, so she sent domestic things like flowers and recipes and an apron with blue pockets that are red on the inside. I live in fear of power outages. I jerk awake in the middle of the night sometimes and turn on every light in the house and the radio and the television and I pace and pace and iron your shirts. I’m sure one day I will come home to see that the single bulb has blown. In the sudden darkness your mother’s daisies will have wilted and died.

6S

Jesselyn Collins is a 19 year old semi-student living in New York.