Cobwebs

Mumma,

you say I am too young to tell Zinnia's from cobwebs.

You scold me when you see me saving up all my rickshaw coins

to buy a little china vase I can put my Zinnias in. Cobwebs to you.

Cobwebs, you say.

You love me, like I cannot remember loving people. 

So you scold me. Why must a girl of twenty-whatever water

cobwebs with dust from a borrowed water-strainer with a 

broken spout? Too much of Eliot and Plath, too long

with the wrong man, you say.

Mumma, you love me like I remember loving people.

People that became book-pressed Zinnias that became

cobwebs in little china vases. Cobwebs to you.

Mumma you love me, you say.

Then why won't you tell me that somedays

cobwebs are Zinnia's  and Zinnia's

are cobwebs and

Eliot and Plath and the wrong man are the only right

ones to hold against my chest?