My mother calls the seasons into our home!

my room is flushed in spring.
my mother opened my window, drew
our garden up the wall and into my bed,
my closet. my ceiling rains soft green.
I sleep in the noise of growth.

summer bleeds our living room red,
swims in our paintings of fish and marsh.
summer yawns through our tall windows,
sleeps in the unused hearth.
summer writhes in the room where we live.

my parents sleep in autumn.
their voices stain ochre.
my mother cast the walls their color,
from how they fell in love:
they are the light coming off
the tampa bay in the fall.

winter teaches me what I love.
blue and white waltz together
in the room that faces the street with cold pride.
winter followed my mother into our georgia house,
laid all its color in this room.
I was born on the first day of this room.

my mother is a wizard. she builds
our house in the language of seasons
because her first language wasn’t language.
my mother holds the deed to summer.
she seeded the land
and grew the fence on which the seasons
impale themselves every year.
she knows what it sounds like when a pear
speaks to the sun.
her first language was the color of dirt,
and the color of water,
and the color of dirt and water mixed together.

but my first language was words.
they grew on every surface
of our house, but I didn’t say my first sentences
until years after I learned to speak:
this color is autumn.
this room is winter.
this sound is spring.
this house is summer.

———————-

Catherine is a 20-something person, living in Boston and working for educational equality. Catherine grew up in Georgia, and still misses the food, even though she has given herself over to a northern city. In addition to constantly trolling local poetry open mics and slams, Catherine produces the Encyclopedia Show Somerville, a monthly variety show showcasing local artists. Her work has appeared in Nimrod Magazine, The Superstition Review, and Drunk in a Midnight Choir, among others.