That is exactly the work of sorting the seeds, trying to become
conscious down to the very bottom of the situation and then to
know what’s what, and what has what effect … to do it for a
long time would be the woman’s heroic deed.
—Marie-Louise Von Franz
Just like nothing ever happened,
my father says. I told her that’s the only way
for her to come back.
My mother dreams the cat is dead
but still, when she goes out to save the kittens,
it fastens all its claws into her leg,
still it terrorizes her and she wakes up screaming
Get it off—Get it off—
How my sister’s mouth pinched that terrible year
when my mother, who knew already
what my sister was doing, offered to help me
clean my house.
The husband doesn’t knock
on front doors, he stands on tiptoe
to look through a window and taps
on the pane. Inside the house
he talks through doors, and against
anything locked, he rages.
For seven days I clean
the basement—scraps of leather,
knives, archeological trash, toys,
outgrown clothes, folders and folders
of old school files, piles of bedding,
dirty laundry, a mountain of black
trash bags out the back door.
Something like that happened
in my marriage, says a woman
at the end of that summer. And was it
your sister? I ask. No, she says.
It was my best friend,
I don’t have a sister.
The garbage bags unmoved from the back door
when I get home from the mountains.
The basement flooded,
floating with ruin.