Kathryn Petruccelli – poet, writer, teacher, performer

Confession: I have not protected everything
I’ve wanted to protect. Confession:
people think I know something about plants

but I just like their company.
In the sun, which is sometimes shade,
the patience of water waiting to lift away

as a gas. Patio plants, slow in the cold,
shimmer next to puddles. Attempts
to control what grows. My failures—dark holes.

When I was 9, my friends gave me
a teddy bear because I was moving.
I didn’t understand my life

was about to take a different direction
far from them in another state. What is home
at that age? Shame

hadn’t been parsed out yet,
was one giant blob of pain stuffed
into the scuffed & alone part of my little body.

Confession: most days I don’t expect the best
of people. Confession: I’ve always wanted a twin.
I once bought a garden decoration

at a flea market—a large wooden heart
spray-painted half in subtle gold,
the other half covered in shabby chic

rusted metal. Stenciled on the wood: HOME IS.
Another woman also wanted it, though
I’d asked about it first. She said,

You can have it, but her eyes added,
fucking bitch. Each morning I collect
the snails that hide behind the heart,

move them to the dandelion patch
next to the trash. Confession:
sometimes I fling them over the fence.

Confession: sometimes the things with roots
I’m responsible for watering
are all that get me up in the morning.

Confession: I’ve been disappointed in every one
of my birthdays since I was 9. Confession:
Christmases, too.