Montreuil cemetery

The Opiate, Spring Vol. 17 minor chthonic gods and grandmothers (Montreuil cemetery)

Liz Duff Young

she is older than old older than fairy tales more ancient than the living could ever fathom. as she sits on the stoop of her house swallows nibble at the stale gingerbread eaves. self-cut pigeon-gray hair, piss-yellow nails, snow-white apron, myth-thick book on her lap. and yet she must have: skipped rope as a child swept up her hair with pins and smiled “oui” at a war-shattered world dabbed black market champagne behind her ears married in a hand-me-down gown bought this low lonely house with her husband made love in a bedroom that faced the cemetery across the street dandled her first child as the seed of the second took shape in her womb watched high-rise apartments shoot up like beanstalks in next door lots and planted the first rose in her front garden strip (violent pink blooms) tamped and troweled the Medusa head ball of wiggling roots into a deep, damp hole whispered “grow, my pretty, I’ll buy you some friends.”

apricot, mauve, saffron, carmine, cheddar-cheese yellow, semi-double cream, full-double white, navy-tinged black, thornless or fragrant clustered or climbers continual bloomers… her roses ran rampant. roots tunneled under the road with frenzy and glee foraging food in the marble-capped field dotted with dead bouquets dressed in plastic ruffs. back in her yard roses erupted, exploded, caromed on the bush.

her children grew into men her man grew into death

“what beautiful roses” I call out as I pass. gently she cackles “oui, oui, Mère Nature smiles on my soil.” or did she say “soul”?

eons older than old ever-blooming, chthonic and grand, she tilts her wrinkled head like a queen. petals fall.