In the dark floorboards of her childhood, Eve’s great-grandmother
is kneading bread with a fury so deep even the yeast smells like ashes.
The twilight outside the window is as vast as a cypress grove,
bowl of oranges on the table sliced sideways like frozen flames.
The corn chowder on the stove is still boiling.
There is something making Eve’s great-grandmother weep
that is not the onions being cut for the soup.
In the reflection of the silverware, Eve’s grandmother
is trying to save a pile of baby shoes from a burning house.
The cinders pour down like rain until everything is the black
of missing. The shoes are burnt to a crisp;
in the back room of the house a piano
melts into the carpet like a grandiose birthday cake.
Eve’s grandmother is more upset about the shoes than the house.
In a scorched mirror lying among bent picture frames,
Eve’s mother is holding a bloody coat hanger.
The bathwater has grown cold long since she stepped in,
the walls red as crimson leaves.
The heartbeat is gone from her belly, no more tiny drum
bumping in the walls of her womb.
In the dark silver of the coat hanger Eve is standing
over a sink, pressing hand to stomach,
Adam behind her with his chin resting on her shoulder,
looking into the mirror to try and find her unborn daughter’s ghost.
In the family photograph album, pages after
her great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother’s photos,
Eve will be forever pressed between three generations of women
who weren’t supposed to exist.