moderateclimates:

Every Monday,
my mother waters the ferns
with my father’s soul.

We potted them when we moved into
this shabby old apartment. It smells—
tobacco, old people, death.

We house desperation. Despair
lurks beneath the laundry sink.

Every evening after work,
my father talks to skeletons.
He counts pennies,
lays them on the bathroom counter.

My mother steals them, 
sews them into jacket linings,
trouser hems.

I fall asleep to rain on the windowpane.
The ferns wither away.
Leaves crackling,
the colour of Autumn.

The ferns cling on, breathing
poisonous fumes—

like my father let my mother
claw into his skin;
a parasite living full.