after Jeffrey Davis
Finalist, “Road Not Taken” Contest
We had no dark leaves of longing, instead we held the Mojave, its sand singing through our fingers. Memories close enough to the sweet sage and mesquite, road runners lightning after a desert rain. I’m back among sand dunes back inside that small space spent searching for talismans, fall a shrug away. And the sun at the window, scrying. Each bright sky of memory silvers, like pieces of a broken mirror, immediate again. Encircled by amethyst mountains, remembered for their refusal to fall. If only I could settle on the patio of hope and understanding, near our swimming pool lonely for children and heat, just before the electric flash of summer thunderstorms. We have our places for solitude — that shawled want of the body. My mother stands at the ironing board, her heart no longer moving. And my father sits at the TV, watching men fall and continents collide in neon light — He hates growing old. I want to gather the devotion of the past, to crawl deep into my becoming. I see the girl now, lifting her head in the half-light. I see who she is becoming.
Terresa Wellborn is a librarian and writer who dwells in possibility. Twitter/X @Bricoleur_CCW
(Photo by Matteo Di Iorio on Unsplash)