Mother, I am well.

The city’s gardens are a mild aphrodisiac

to grey winter mornings adding turmoil

in my tea pot, flower pot, storm stirring

in my backyard of things.

The evenings come with

secret hunts of flies; I often mull over events

on the headlines and hide tiny wasps in the slip

of my tongue, the earl grey dissolving

in the corners of my bones.

School is grandiose –

I still break into poetry in the first paragraph

of my essays; I think I’m growing to be

a fine lawyer. The snow does not taste soft

or delicious like back home; it is heavy

and jumps on my skin, reiterating secrets

of an urban sky.

Vera is,

of course, an antidote to my impending dip

into insanity. She and I are lonely, and more recently,

I observed her cheeks color up like petunias

in the vapid winter. Sometimes, I tell her

by parapraxis, of course, how the parsnips

of your farm simmered my solitude with sound,

how the beaming carpets

of your room colored my own.