(Tanacetum vulgare)
Tansy, you were my secret. I’ll never forget
the way we met. He went in for a long shift at work,
and I drove three towns away to an herb shop
where only women worked. I came home that day
with a bag of you, to the cramped and dim kitchen
where I put the kettle on, brewed your leaves
into a mostly flavorless tea, which I now know
could have poisoned me. I would have risked it,
though. And you did your job. You saved me.
How much better you were than the cannula,
the fish-tank tube, other things girls who were bold
whispered to girls who were scared, one hand
on a shoulder, the other cupping an ear. Within
the year, I’d left him. Never wavered, never told.
_
Brett Warren (she/her) is the author of The Map of Unseen Things (Pine Row Press, 2023). Her poetry has appeared in Canary, The Comstock Review, Hole in the Head Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Massachusetts, in a house surrounded by pitch pine and black oak trees—nighttime roosts of wild turkeys, who sometimes use the roof of her writing attic as a runway. Connect with her at http://www.brettwarrenpoetry.com.
© 2023, Brett Warren
Halfway Down the Stairs 