Mother Poem by Leslie Philibert

If I scrape your skin I find
patina under my fingernails.
Being blind, I panic in your cupboard of
clothes, they smell sick-sweet
of primroses,
no changing of rooms, our beds
are melted, we are framed in silver.
Let me crawl back into your cave of
old honey and bitter herbs,
lost by being carried.
When you are no longer here
you are here in the space you left.