When I run away now
I go behind the garage
where the ghosts of
the dead sunflowers hold
hands & sway in between
July’s warm sighs off the corn—
They aren’t angry about how
I forgot about them
when we went on vacation
to chingoteague
or about how the sun
sucked their ghosts right
out of their leaves & stems—
their skeletons fell
like cicada shells & I felt
like a terrible terrible mother

sometimes the sunflowers
sing kumbaya & brush the
knots out of my brown hair
like the nurse at school did
when we all got up too late
for first grade—
she didn’t wet my hair
like my mother would &
it made me feel like something
was wrong with us
the way she tugged at my scalp—
the sunflowers are more careful

Robin Gow’s poetry has recently been published in Synaesthesia, The Write Launch, FIVE:2:ONE, and Corbel Stone Press. He is an undergraduate student at Ursinus College studying English, Creative Writing, and Spanish but poetry is always her passion. He runs a poetry blog and serves as the production editor of the Lantern literary magazine.