late morning in the garden, ache-kneed & sore hips, i show zoey how to harvest, how to pluck carrots from the ground like loose teeth. carrots the color of all good things: mandarins, marigolds, the winged ends of monarchs gliding above sunflowers. she holds their long slender bodies by their leafy updos. ZA-NA-HOR-IA, i say slow in spanish to add more music to her mouth from the motherland. my mother calls with one of her bad-feeling check-ins, then the doctor, with results, with a diagnosis in the form of my body devouring itself because of inheritance. my questions answered with: possibly, could be, all of the above, it’s hard to say. & i say not now. right now, the sun on our skin, my niece & her carrot conquest & below us a plot of soil vacant of leaf & root. i teach zoey how an empty graveyard can be growth again. again we work the soil, sow the seeds, soak the rows. MAN-GUER-A, i say. & together we spray streams of hose water across the yard. pretend we’re two goddamn ghostbusters but instead of seizing phantoms, we free them with laughter. zoey shows me how a good growth life can still come from a place of violence.