J.M.C. Kane is the author of the non-fiction book Quiet Brilliance: What Employers Miss About Neurodivergent Talent and How to See It (CollectiveInk UK). He is an ASD-1 and writes from this learned experience. His prose work has been published in more than three dozen literary journals & magazines, including Plough, Camas, AMERICA Magazine, The New Ohio Review, Smokelong Quarterly. He lives in New Orleans with his family where he works as an environmental attorney.
They came back every year,
though I never meant for them to.
The ground had remembered more than I confessed—
the small fish buried behind the boulder,
their silver prayers folded into clay.
What I called deception,
the soil renamed devotion.
It took the shame whole,
composted it into flame.
Each spring the shoots arrive like forgiveness,
thin green syllables spelling her name.
I still crush the petals between my fingers,
same scent, same bright insistence:
the living don’t ask to be believed.
After she died,
I planted them on purpose—
a ritual of accident, rehearsed.
Each bloom a little sun
that doesn’t rise for me but through me.
I water them with what I have left:
memory, and the soft salt that survives it.
And when they lean toward dusk,
I tell her about the color—
how it’s still brighter than it should be,
how it never quite fades,
how I’ve kept her alive
without meaning to.
Calendula was inspired by a Summer I spent with my Mother in my youth in the Trapani province in western Sicily. The Calendula maritima (sea marigold), a rare species that is a local symbol of this area.
Poetry in this post: © J.M.C. Kane
Published with the permission of J.M.C. Kane