Sniffing the wildwood flower that blooms in the inkwell of my mind, where once there were woods. Now insanity vines deeper than my tattoo of grief—I carve the veins in Mama’s wrists, blue as the bruises left by her last lover. The one who didn’t stay long enough to see her wither. Not as she was at the end, but younger, grinning with a cigarette dangling from her chipped front tooth. The smoke curls up past my fingers, thick and reluctant, like the last words she ever spoke to me. “The beanie weenies are in the fridge.”

I pop the lid. The smell hits me—tin and salt and something faintly rotten underneath like promises left too long in the sun. Mama used to eat them cold, straight from the can with her fingers, licking the sauce off her knuckles. I press one slick little sausage between my teeth. It bursts, flooding my mouth with grease and memories of sitting cross-legged on the linoleum. Watching her paint her toenails while the TV buzzed with static. She always missed a spot near the cuticle.

The can of beanie weenies sweats in my palm. Condensation dripping down my wrist like the last time Mama tried to wash the blood off her hands after one of her “bad nights.” The fridge light flickers—same as it did back when the power company only cut us off every other Thursday. The bulb’s dying hum reminds me of the way she’d sing old country songs through her nose while stirring powdered milk into tap water. Pretending it was something richer. Sniffing the wildwood flower that blooms in the inkwell.