"I Will Search for My Daughter's Bones" by Cyndie Randall

I Will Search For My Daughter’s Bones

When it's time to sell my father's house, I will bake cookies in the oven. I heard
a sweet warm smell can make any place feel like home. As buyers cattle through,

I'll pull on my mother's gardening gloves and wave from all fours. Just cleaning up
the flower beds, I'll shout to curious women. You'll love it here come spring! Families will

inch through the belly of walls, and men with appetites will sink their teeth into
my baked goods, rattle the structure of things, stamp their footprints on the bedroom carpet.

Meanwhile, I'll be digging, a seasick hunger bubbling in my gut like a tiny hand turning. I’ll
hold my breath and press back with my soiled palm, but there will be no answer. Fallen

tendrils of hair will stick to my mouth. I’ll spit them out and go deeper while I whisper,
Is she near my childhood pets? Is she mummied in a bag under the fence? Swaddled

beneath the trunk of the pear tree? Did the roots cradle her body through 24 seasons
of fruit? I will search for my daughter's bones until all the light has gone, but

I will find not one. I will stand up. I will shuffle back to the kitchen core. I will smell
my labor of bloody knees and muddy sweat and the burned ruins of an oven left

on too long. I'll turn the knob to off and lick the cold white plate where the cookies
used to be. My tongue will canoe crumbs while the realtor chomps and swallows in

my ear. She’ll squeal about expecting an offer any minute, about how any family can make
memories in a home like this one. I will not tell her they can bury them too. I will wash up, 

and if she asks what flowers will be blooming in spring, I’ll answer, lilies. And when 
she points and says, You’ve still got a dirty hand print on your stomach, I'll say, I do.

Cyndie Randall

Cyndie Randall’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Frontier Poetry, Crab Creek Review, Longleaf Review, Okay Donkey, Whale Road Review, and elsewhere. She works as a therapist and lives among the Great Lakes. Connect with her on Twitter @CyndieRandall or at cyndierandall.com

Headshot: Cyndie Randall

Photo Credit: Jackson Purcell