Acts of Love
Like naming all the birds that lived
outside our kitchen window and the seashells
that rose with the tide along a well-walked
stretch of sand edging the Gulf of Mexico. On school
break in London, Kensington Gardens, when she
cried out loudly, Mary, look at the flowers!
as I shrank, mortified, into my fifteen-year-old self, willing
the passerby not to realize the American tourist shouting in my
direction was my mother. Enforced hikes from the French Alps
to the NJ Ramapo mountains on which I remained sullen, dragging
my feet, while she rattled on about the genus of
every tree and plant we happened to pass. If I close my eyes,
I can see her now, lips pursed, determined not to let me
sink into the sediment of hormonal interruptions, the jagged
emotional spikes and uncontrolled oversensitivity that sent me
regularly, door slamming into the cocoon of my postered bedroom,
to blast the gothic, lovesick new wave sounds of The Cure while I stewed, thinking, overthinking my way through the adolescent malaise that had me living
uncomfortably in a body that no longer felt like it belonged
to me and raging against the terrible injustice of what was, at the time,
everything. Why was I so sure she had nothing to teach me? Not
about Tiger lilies, the paper white dogwood bloom or the pearlescent interior
of a lady slipper shell. Mary, rub your thumb here where it’s cool and pink. This was
a home for a tiny, alive creature and what’s left behind. We all leave
something behind. A heron’s white feather, the holes
made from the rat-ta-tat-tat of the red mohawked woodpecker
against the tall palm tree. The ringing bell sounds of water falling
in a fountain. Mary! Look how the light bounces, see the dive-bomb of the
pelican, the short- lived yellow daffodil, the purple-blue iris
poking its nose out of the dirt. These are the names of all the things
outside yourself that you’ll care about someday. These
are the things that will one day set you free.
Mary Paulson is a prolific poet whose work has been widely published in numerous literary journals and magazines. Most recently, she won third place in the Kent and Sussex Poetry Society Competition. She was also a winner of the 2024 Letter Review Poetry Prize.