The title of Joni Karen Caggiano’s powerful poetry collection, One Petal at a Time, makes me recall what I used to say as a child while plucking petals off a flower, “He loves me; he loves me not.” Ironically, we would destroy a beautiful bloom petal by petal while seeking clarification on a value of utmost beauty: Love.
In this garden of verses, Caggiano explores her life at its worst and its best. The crux of her journey is love. How it is misunderstood and abused. How it is held in passion. How it blooms in fidelity. The love she describes is painful, lush, and ultimately trusting.
Her start in life is unpropitious, yet she thrives because the love of God cradles her throughout her life, fostering her deep faith.
An Overview of Caggiano’s Tormented Life
One Petal at a Time has three parts. The book is a memoir in chronological order covering three stages of her life: childhood, adolescence (first love), and adulthood (mature love).
Each section of the book and the cover design display stunning abstract line drawings of Francisco Bravo Cabrera. These images outline the petals of a woman’s soul as it emerges from chaos into wholeness.
The images contain the shadow of despair peeking from behind an aspect of self. We can’t rid ourselves of this darkness. Caggiano’s poems show how a woman who faced terror daily as a child survives and forgives. Love is loss and regeneration, petal by petal.
Part One: Beginning
In childhood, Caggiano faces fear in a dysfunctional family. Like many children with dysfunctional parents, Caggiano must act as an adult. In “Primrose in Winter”, the prologue poem, she empathizes with abused and emotionally abandoned children. She writes, “…we exist to fail // take care of parents at age six / jumbled, frightened, a defective mix / worn away and far-flung, / we ARE the angry bricks.”
Caggiano’s family dynamic surpasses what many may think is dysfunctional; it’s terrifying. Some poems allude to unwelcome visits to her room at night, alcoholism, beatings, neglect, and suicide. These horrific experiences are expressed in sharp imagery as these selections form the prose poems from the Prologue and Part One reveal.
Fear, an unwelcome bedfellow, slithers beside her at age five, making peaceful slumber impossible (Prologue).
Within are monsters, wounds, and violations incarcerated….I am the watcher of monsters slumbering with lit cigarettes, abandoning hot iron, stove, and oven…. The Red Brick House is frightening with monsters and notes of the dead who skulk. Like an embracing vine covering my tiny body, I am the voice of fear enclosed in nature’s dress (“The Beginning”).
She is misled to think her uncles’ abuse is love, but the men act like “vipers striking at innocence” and “secrets like hairy figs grow wild” Caggiano must be the “great pretender”, wearing “Smiles, make-believe faces” (“The Beginning”).
Caggiano reveals these events through the eyes of her inner child, who finds comfort in nature and communes with fairies, mermaids, and angels. These poems reveal magical escapes which may have saved her. In “Reflection-Prose”, she realizes a stranger with gifts who has been visiting for years is an angel.
I perceive the wonder of the gift and grasp the stranger’s identity. Such a beautiful thing I had never seen. Her face was an alluring light, blazing like the sun, for she was an angel.
Caggiano is transformed. “My slip is now a glowing covering of layer upon layer of silk worthy of a queen.”
Her visions are interrupted by her mother’s physical abuse. In “Silent Cry”, she must be vigilant in “the house of horrors”, where she always fears “drunken monsters who linger here / lightning cracks, a lariat bellows / God hears silent cries of innocents”.
Despite the unspeakable abuse, Caggiano shows compassion and love for her mother, whom she cooked with. In “Southern Rising”, she writes, “aromas dance in air like magic / dough rising in twin wood bowls / along with smiles of my expectations / beams of love given as a meal”.
Throughout her childhood, Caggiano prays for God’s help. In “Where Are You God”, she writes that her parents were “swapped as robots” who failed to care for her. “I ball up in a fetal position, I can feel God / yet I also feel my anger and wonder why / must you leave me here, JUST let me die”.
During the beatings and other forms of abuse, she says, “God spoke to me often / during these times” (“Painful”). In “March Day”, “God nourishes, all creatures fed”. Nature is a sanctuary for Caggiano. In “Waiting Still”, “moonflower open at dusk to heat my plea / the face of God while holding me”.
Part Two: Seeding
In this part of the book, Caggiano is becoming a young woman using whatever tools she was taught to attract love:
Low self-esteem grew like weeds in an unkempt garden. The desire to compete with every woman in a room became the norm. Any stranger her loved one stared at extensively brought out the lioness in her. She would don brass armor to shine like an army of soldiers or wear a skimpy dress that grasped her slight curves firmly, like bark from an iron oak. Exhaustion was the enemy as there were not enough hours to make her lists (of what she must do) to make her life calculable. Her needs were unimportant. The only thing that mattered was that everyone approved of her and that the boat never got lost at sea. She must always steer the ship to perfection. The problem was she wasn’t a sailor, and she knew she needed a lifeline! (Prologue).
She is at the age when young women are attracted to love. She writes, “I realize I need a river of love with which to link”. God brings her “Valiant, prince of my dreams”, and “Love felt like a wonderment, and my shield melting like chocolate in my youthful mouth in front of your gazing eyes” (“Prologue Poem-Seedling”). However, …
Even love, Mom made into something foul, letting me know she inspected my panties now, … a warning of such harsh sorrow, one to let me know she was watching me and my first boyfriend….She is the snake…. Existence was a gift for the first time…until it wasn’t.
Despite the sorrow, the language in this section lifts. The imagery is romantic, yet metaphors of past trauma are braided in. This is a transitional period. A young woman seeks love and agency, power, and autonomy. To do that she must, like all adolescents, separate from her parents. In “Forks of Ivy”,
… the ivy threads enlace through
patterned, worn, and tattered pieces of my youth
its blood a mixture of punctures that weave circles
of skin and bone into forgotten stories
tucked in corners where candy corn and ice cream drips
dried, like ink on memoirs now drawn into dust devils
“Counting Clouds” has stunning imagery depicting young passion with phrases like “I lay my head upon new tulips / once worth the same as a diamond” and “honey that leaves a path / of lover’s unwritten prose / past my chin’s quiver.”
Trauma still haunts her. In “Woods and Beasts” she relives her parents’ past abuse and the fear that stalked her.
…. how I yearn to die
fear swells like a black prickly thorn
monsters lurk close where I lie
their diet, liquid, one calling forth beasts
fear howls….
Some poems are disturbing. In “Our Pond”, she is tied with a belt to a bed. She feels like a spider caught up in a web and prays that her father doesn’t do the same thing to her. However, God is with her: “God smiles within a brow of a bright star / this will not always be my sad tale; “only those that won sight will see my scar” (“Woods and Beasts”).
In “Lady of Strength”, she writes, “…my chariot flies to the echo / of prayers going skyward”.
In adolescence, young love is often betrayed. In “Us My Love”, love Is “not forever / God never did / forsake me / when you left me / for another.” In “Silence”, she warns, “…don’t touch me without a note or invitation” and …
You think I do not feel your betrayal, my winter’s cold
silence slices pieces of me, an icicle, the lies you told.
The betrayal resounds with the abandonment by her parents she endures in her house of horrors: “…betrayal, love for years gone without a trace / my heart stops, a gust pulls me to an abandoned place” (“What If”).
Grief arises in many poems in this section. Caggiano still endures trauma at home and additional loss of grace in her first love. In “No Longer Two”,
at seventeen glorious he was
earthly salvation, my safe place
but now I hang cocooning
wrapping me in silk
the spider always gets his prey
not lovable, my tombstone will say
Caggiano can still find strength in suffering. In “Waiting”, she writes, “Agony is a reminder of our existence, / not unlike the cavity that cannot be / filled so it lays in wait, until it dawns a / purpose.” Until her “ancient soul is finally free” (“Memories Buried in a Box”).
Part Three: Blooming
The prologue in this part summarizes the abuse and betrayal explored in Parts One and Two and reaffirms God’s protection and grace. Caggiano is in touch with her inner child:
Legacies come with God’s Holy Grace. An old-wise soul at twenty-two, I spent six glorious months getting to know this child, while she swam without her floaties on her arms. She took my nourishment and grew into a gift of breezes floating gently with the smells of magnolia, gardenia, and jasmine. Like seasons in a rushing hourglass, she grew and flourished. Beautiful were her ways of watching out for those who spent a whiff of sadness or pain.
Aligned with her answered prayers is finding her new love: Her husband. With mature love, she feels whole and protected. In “Growth” she feels safe, “I feel love / my heart blooms / in all directions / safety settles…making tender peace / with myself at last / white doves / sing”.
In this part of the book, she explores her feelings about her parents’ suicides. Witnessing her pain is a way to recover from her parents’ ultimate form of abandonment of her. Imagine the release of pain and power of forgiveness in “Open Casket”:
…my heart can see your soul as it gracefully flies
meeting God in His fluffy home in the skies
we will hold each other, and I will love you
you will tell me you’re sorry, and I will smile
I know, mommy, we found Grace, I am sorry too
She is free to open to a new love. In Melding into You”, she writes,
we are one
as our heartbeat is a blue velvet petal
which floats into moments that are giving birth
to that which has no name
my morning, evening, and in between
may your love for me never cease
my beautiful, green-eyed husband
without you, I could never breathe
For Caggiano, love is kind, faithful, trusting, and lasting. Her love for her daughter is not abusive. She guides and supports her daughter. In “Dips of Life”, she advises her daughter that a man who deserts her on prom night is not a good choice.
one of many challenges
in the life of a daughter
tiny dips that will make
her a strong woman
someday, the pansies
come back too
just like she does
when she’s feeling blue
Ultimately, Caggiano’s faith in God kept her alive throughout her life. “...rocking to the rhythm of my beating heart’s joyful song / God didn’t take me then…I am exactly where I / belong”.
One Petal at a Time by Joni Karen Caggiano is a profound collection of poems. The poems and prose poems are masterful in content and design. I highly recommend this book, but you should have a box of tissues handy. You will weep and pray with the suffering soul that prevails in a journey of strength, hope, love, and faith.
This book is endorsed by Claudia Black Ph.D. and other mental health professionals.
One Petal at a Time (Prolific Pulse Press, 2024) is available in Kindle and paperback formats on Amazon.
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