She locked her hands on my elbow
As I packed away my chrysanthemums
I nestled their pot in a cardboard box.
And fixed stems where her thrown shoe had landed
“I can’t bring these. Customs won’t let me.”
Then softly she whispered, “Don’t go.”

She nudged the box with her big toe
She wanted them in case I might return
I said my mother wouldn’t neglect them
She promised to remember the water
But her dead soil never nourished me
Still, she sighed and cried, “Please. Don’t go.”

She reached for the box when I walked past
And said she could keep them for me.
I deferred that my mother would not neglect them.
She argued she had never killed anything.
I said she had never helped anything grow.
And, yet, she said, “Don’t go.”

I left her the sleeves of CDs
Our sounds had become too mixed.
I could not pull my rock from her pop
My Bach from her Pussy Cat Dolls
She threw them at me when she refused
And still, she said, “Don’t go.”

When I had packed my last bit of baggage,
She said she would not see me to the airport
But insisted she wanted to call me.
I turned my phone off until the plane landed
So, the first thing I heard in my new world
Was a message saying, “Don’t go.”