Laurel Benjamin

In this poem we will not lie about a valley

once sewn with orchards, enough cherries to haunt a million pies,
and blackbirds who hunted in an arabesque motion, one wing 

raised. We will not lie about the airport, tech industry, housing
developments, streets once named after blossoms renamed 

after people. We will not lie about the hospital pavilion
stitched to the original building which trained 

a generation of nurses. On one of those floors a scuffling
sound, where your father lay, and the room smelled of popcorn

somehow, and on the TV a noir film rarely shown where
Alan Ladd hides with a kitten. Truly, on one of those floors

I saw my father's ghost trailing a sheet, his face
drained, visiting from another hospital, from another time. 

On one of those floors a machine dispensed hot chocolate,
M&Ms, sweet rolls. On one of those floors 

we discussed with the doctor the end of your father's
oxygen, then saw there was no solid divider between 

puffs from his cracked lips and arrest. Outside
the building we kissed a reassurance of lips, standing 

among cherry trees someone planted in squares
between pavement. They wouldn't stop blossoming.

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Laurel Benjamin is the author of Flowers on a Train (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2025),  a finalist for the Cider Press Book Award and an Honorable Mention for the Small Harbor Publishing Laureate Prize. Written into the Curve of the Sea's Open Throat (Shanti Arts) is forthcoming in 2026. A San Francisco Bay Area poet, she is active with the Women’s Poetry Salon, curates Ekphrastic Writers and is a reader for Common Ground Review. Publications include: Pirene's Fountain, Lily Poetry Review, Cider Press Review, Taos Journal of Poetry, Mom Egg Review, Nixes Mate. Her work has also been anthologized in Gunpowder Press' Women in a Golden State (2025), among others. She invented a secret language with her brother. Read her work at: laurelbenjamin.com.