Aubade: Woman with Roses, and: Paso Doble

Aubade: Woman with Roses, and: Paso Doble Joanne Mallari (bio) Aubade: Woman with Roses —El Camino de Esmeralda (watercolor and acrylic on paper) by Danelle Rivas Although from a distance the woman exudes mystery and allure, up close she wears her story off- the-shoulder, even as she hides behind a bouquet of roses budding from the lion's head. How can they grow when sharp teeth threaten to consume the flesh beneath the thorn? Below the petals, the seamstress embroiders an octopus where her ovaries would be. During mating, the male approaches the female, who fends him off for a while, but then accepts him. At nineteen, I learn that no is a teaser, an invitation for his hands to unbutton and slide beneath the waist. From a distance, a gentleman takes a young lady to dinner, End Page 106 courts her with a bouquet of roses, but up close the look on her face spells fear, like when I first glimpsed the scar running across my mother's lower abdomen— the wound opened and reopened, and opened again, because no would spell an eternity in hell. From a distance, my mother is sure and steadfast in her faith, although up close, scar tissue knits itself back together. I remember that motherhood means giving all your yeses to the will of God. The shopkeeper at the cathedral bookstore confirms this when she tells me why she marks her place with rose petals, pressed and preserved in plastic. It gives her comfort to remember that Mary knows the pain of raising a son who begins to die the moment she first End Page 107 holds him. In summer, buds begin to emerge from the rosebush in my backyard, their thorns no match for the shears in my kitchen. End Page 108 Paso Doble The white cross approaches—a banner of a name unfurling. I can almost read it, but I drivetoo quickly, and the letters blur. Instead of wonderingabout the name, I think of the driver behind the wheel, what songmight've been on before the accident. My fathertotaled the car when I was two. They say my mother was luckyto be sitting in the back, making sure I didn't dropan ice cream cone. If a song was playing then, I wouldn'tremember. Now, on Baring, I listen to Rihanna's "S.O.S.,"try to match the beat to steps, which reminds meof the talk I had with Lolo after the diagnosis: lessthan a minute left on the phone, an Okay, gotta go. Mahal—He'd asked if I liked ballroom, and if he could, he'd show me how:one-two-one-two / one-two-one-two End Page 109 I move through a pattern of red lightsand stop signs, while the radio holds steady like a bass line.Does the song keep playing after the car strikes a body?Mama says these things go in slow motion: she heard nothingbut the metal giving in, saw only the dark—no life flashingbefore her eyes—and what felt like a carousel spinning was reallya t-bone collision. Circumstance leads the dance, and we fallinto the turn. The diagnosis stands like a torero, waitingfor Lolo to fight, wear out. Umikot ng umikot, wrote the driver at fault,and we were the dancers coming back up from a death drop. End Page 110 Joanne Mallari joanne mallari is a Reno-based, Filipino-American poet. She believes in making arts education more accessible, because she discovered her love of language through public programs like the Southern Nevada Writing Project. Her debut chapbook, Daughter Tongue, was published by Kelsay Books. Copyright © 2024 University of North Dakota