8
Like teeth
Mandala Laura
Every year I plant seeds over my mother's grave, and every year the cemetery calls me.
"Someone's planted corn this time," they say. "We've never seen such white kernels. Like teeth."
My first harvest was winter squash, and I made a soup with wakame and miso to salt out my mother's bitterness. My mother once hacked open squash with a machete, carved out the strings, and filled the hollow with butter. We stood near the stove, holding our halves with kitchen mitts, scooping out the caramelized meat. After her death, I taught myself what ripe meant. I dressed in black and looted her grave site under a sliced moon, hauling squashes in my handbag, baking and tasting each one.
I dream of my death, my own bounty. How one day I will be buried with pine nuts in my pocket. I have an image in my head of a small but robust pine tree reaching roots to touch each foot and hand underground.