Karima Alma

Reviewed in the United States on May 14, 2024

I bought Joni Karen Caggiano’s very impressive book,” One Petal at a Time” and when it arrived, found myself devouring it all, from cover to cover in one sitting.
I couldn’t put it down.
I am going to use Joni’s own words here to describe the over-all feelings I first felt when I began to dive into her real life horror story of a small child surviving alone in a household where chronic alcoholism changed her parents into drunken incoherent robots, right before her eyes,
In her poem, “Where Are You God?” she says,

“mom and dad swapped for robots
years of terror melding together
like a warm plastic puzzle
mom’s time spent cooking gone
morning’s breath was blood drippings
instead of bacon fat cooking

I can feel God
yet I also feel my anger and wonder why
must you leave me here, JUST let me die”

This wish to die in a small child can only hint at what her daily life had been, and she says in the beginning of the book,

“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.”

As it turned out, this daily-abused child was never abandoned by God. God showed her, her protection and her escape through the amazing awareness of all the Nature around her.
In every poem, I was struck with how this child was so joined to Nature, she wore it as her shield. It saved her sanity. She saw the angels watching over her and she created tea parties with the fairies who joined her in the woods, She built a cathedral in her mind of the blooms, the birds, even counting the dots of the ladybugs.
Her suffering opened her senses and Nature was her soothing balm, it was her curing ointment for every welt and scar.

“March Day
lady bugs let
two twin crickets
play connect the dots
on their beauty spots “

Under the Khaki Tent

“survived the agony of living this boozy ballet
in that house of crazy
I spent every moment I could to fly away
in the woods till the line of
right and wrong grew hazy

Something Missing
“robots drink and often stink
one day my parents will be back
love, food and caring I will no longer lack.”

It is journey from abuse and horror to compassion and forgiveness and I will let her tell her own story, like she told it to me, in every page I read of “One Petal at a Time.
Pick up a copy and get comfortable. Through poetry and prose Joni has a very worthwhile and ultimately uplifting real life tale to tell.
Sit and read and listen to her.

The black & white paintings” of the renowned artist, Francisco Bravo Cabrera, that adorn her cover and begin each new part of her book, are beautiful.

I highly recommend, “One Petal At a Time” It is a roller coaster of emotions, tears to joy, but it is an amazing testimony to survival of the human spirit and the curative powers of her belief in God and Nature.

PS. My credit card lives in the USA (hehe) but I live in Costa Rica:)