Roots Always Growing Deeper

Jennifer Miller

My mother hated winter,

could not bear the hard blue mountains

with their frosty white crowns

and those interminable nights

when all the ghosts came to settle by the bedside

with their tales of what should have been,

what was, and what will never be.

She would clean the oven at 3 a.m.

to avoid their acerbic conversations.

I think she might have liked it here

where winter is hardly a distinct season,

more like an extension of late autumn.

The trees will bud in February,

and spring will charge in like a mad bull,

eager to get things started.

That was the difference between us—

she wanted perpetual flowers,

but I was a child of silent darkness

with my roots always growing deeper,

hoping to be nourished.

First published in Mosaic (2025)