I’ll hide on the lowest shelf
in the kitchen cabinet
where gold peach breasts
crowd together in Mason jars.

Dad could take the buggy back
through the section.
The old horse knows the way
to Uncle Hank’s, black dirt open
in fresh-plowed fields.

I could return to a winter morning,
clang and splash of my parents
wringing clothes
through double rollers,
emptying steamy wash water into pails.

If death were truly a circle,
I’d be a paired cell swimming
inside my mother.
She would be young
with bright red hair.

She could go back
to nine brothers and sisters
but not Uncle Nick
because I want
their father still to live,
an old guitar in his arms.

Nick could listen, almost singing,
lift his unborn head
toward his father’s voice
in the warm kitchen
while his mother folds clean clothes.

Barbara Daniels’ book Talk to the Lioness is forthcoming from Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press. Her other full-length book of poetry, Rose Fever, was published by WordTech Press. Daniels’ poetry has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Mid-American Review, and many other journals. She received three fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.