heather bloom

my mother's room is full
of heather. when i was a child
i would go & pick handfuls. 
try to fill my own room too.
i am a creature of mimicry. i put mirrors
in the mouths of loved ones. i ask,
"can you see your blood in me?"
once i bought a plaid shirt to match
a boy who was using me for fireworks.
or i guess maybe we were filling each other's
rooms with heather. i dropped him off
once at the foot of a mountain 
like a dog toy. another time i pretended 
to be a gender. okay, actually it was
several. there is a celtic myth
that heather would bloom on battlefields,
the softened red color, the remnants of blood. 
my heather grows bright red. the blood,
still here & swelling. the battle, not a battle
but a ladder into a wound. i try to 
find an ex on facebook. i want to see
if there is heather where they live
or if this is just my botany. i visit my mother.
her room is unchanged from when
i was small & too curious. we talk
about the same things. the tomatoes.
the bathroom. my father laying in the yard
waiting for heather to sprout from 
his eyes. the ghost of a car in the driveway
with a cockpit full of those flowers. 
some heather is white. the legend says
that these should bring good luck because
they are untouched by battle. 
i do not believe in white heather. as if there is
a flower that does not remember anything
about blood. i try to explain myself sometimes.
i say, "my parents are like this too." by which
i mean prone to too-much-ness. likely to 
speak a language without doors. sit in
the bathtub at night with one ear to the wall
listening to the roots twisting in the earth.